IELTS Research Reports

Gaynor Lloyd-Jones, Charles Neame and Simon Medaneythe assessment of English language in written scripts. Each school has its own policy on assessmentbut in general, marks are not allocated specifically for language per se although it may be subsumedunder criteria such as ‘presentation’ or ‘structure’ for which marks are allocated in marking schemes.It was therefore not surprising that Course Directors varied in the degree to which they correctedgrammatical and spelling errors on course assignments and theses. SAS5 and SOM2 proof read theirstudents’ work, making corrections, because they believed it to be good feedback practice and hoped itmight encourage students to improve their written English. Extract 17 exemplifies these points.Extract 17“I will mark course work, and I think my colleagues do much the same thing; they willhighlight where there are English problems within a report and encourage students, in futurereports, to try and improve their English. The only time where it would have a bearingon the mark is if it becomes unreadable and we are not able to understand what they aretrying to convey in which case it will cause a lowering of the mark. But we don’t have anelement of the mark that is for English. We will, on occasion, have elements of the mark forpresentation, but that isn’t necessarily looking at the language that is used. It’s more to dowith the structuring of the report or the presentation of the map work that forms an importantpart of some assignments.”SAS5 Course DirectorMany Course Directors proposed that there should be more willing and capable ‘proof readers’ oncampus to reduce the burden on supervisors. These suggestions came from Course Directors in allSchools but SOE Course Directors were particularly likely to voice the suggestion. It is worth notingthat the nature of ‘proof reading’ was not explored in any depth during the interviews. Whether theimplications are to attend to surface features of grammar or to deeper problems of editing how ideasand arguments are expressed cannot therefore be determined. The data indicate that the thesis is theacademic product most likely to reflect the tension between academic standards and the rise in NNESstudents but that solutions are neither easy nor immediate.9 SUMMER PROGRAMME STUDENTS’ PROGRESSThis section describes how the second aim of the study, seeking a relationship between NNES studentsentry test scores and subsequent academic progress, was attained. In Section 5 we explained how theresearch enquiry was diverted to a study of the Summer Programme (Summer Programme) studentsin consequence of the limited number of students entering with English test scores. Recognised as analternative strategy, a study of Summer Programme students would be justified since they representeda discrete group of students whose language abilities had been identified as borderline and whoseprogress might be tracked.In considering the concept of progress as applied to Summer Programme students, it was decidedto construct profiles for each student that might log the development of their English languageproficiency during the year. Initial intentions were to compare these with profiles of academic progressincluding marks from assignments and projects through the year but this was not possible becauseit contravened institutional regulations concerning the publication of individual students’ marks, soalternatives had to be found.160 www.ielts.org