IELTS Research Reports

Gaynor Lloyd-Jones, Charles Neame and Simon MedaneyTable 6 shows the list of the 24 Summer Programme students who took part in the research, themethod of language assessment, the entry test score and sub-scores, where available. The data confirmthe earlier findings from the pilot and interview studies showing differences between Schools inadmission practices for borderline NNES students. SAS students are solely assessed by interview,SOM by English test score and SOE use both methods of language assessment but are more likely touse formal English tests. Problems arose locating the records for Student SOE5 who transferred toanother MSc programme within the same School.Students SOE3, SOE4 and SOE6 comply with the university requirement for English entryrequirements but SOE3 and SOE6 have not reached the standard for their MSc programme. SOE4presented two IELTS scores almost a year apart; the initial score was 6, the later one, 6.5.The score of student SOE1 lies between IELTS 6 and 6.5 but the remaining scores are below theminimum entry requirement. All of the latter group, save one student, have at least one sub-score of5.5 or lower, which is somewhere between the modest and competent user in the IELTS band scoredescriptors. Student SOM4 presented the results of two IELTS tests, three months apart which showedan improvement of one band score in the later result which is reported in the table.The majority of Summer Programme students attended the Summer Programme for four weeks butfour students, SAS2, SAS10, SOM2 and SOM 6 attended for eight weeks.9.2.2 Summer Programme students – Pre-test IELTSAll Summer Programme students sat the Pre-test IELTS in September a week before the conclusion ofthe Summer Programme and just before the start of the Masters course. For reasons already explained,the pre-test exam differs from IELTS so direct comparisons of the results with IELTS scores are notentirely reliable. There are other differences, notably in marking. Writing is the only skill given a bandscore similar to IELTS. Listening and Reading are reported as raw scores; the total marks availablefor Listening are 49 and for Reading, 45. The Pre-test IELTS results are shown in Table 7 with thestudents’ IELTS entry scores, where available.The overall results for the Summer Programme students are low when compared to pre-entry testscores and to the university entry requirements. Band scores for Writing average between 5 and 5.5.Only one student of the group with overall pre-entry IELTS scores of 6 or higher (or equivalent) scores6 on Writing, the remainder range from 5.5 to 4. At the extremes, two students in SAS (SAS1 andSAS4) and one in SOE (SOE6) score 6 and at the other end of the range, two students in SAS (SAS2and SAS11) and one in SOM (SOM3) score 4 or 4.5. The raw scores for Listening and Reading showapproximately similar patterns of score distribution. The average score for the group on Listeningis 27 (55%) and in Reading 26 (58%). The three students scoring 6 on Writing also score higheston Listening and Reading, when the two scores are combined. Of the three lowest scoring studentson Writing, two also score low on Listening and Reading (36 and 38) but not the third (47). Threestudents with Writing scores of 5.5 have scores below 40 for combined Listening and Reading.Although the circumstances of the Pre-test urge caution in interpreting the scores, the findings indicatethat these students’ English language skills are borderline.164 www.ielts.org