IELTS Research Reports

Tim Moore, Janne Morton and Steve PriceThe results of the study are used to suggest possible enhancements to the IELTS academic readingtest. A useful principle to strengthen the test’s validity, we argue, would be to push test tasks, wherepossible, in the direction of those more ‘global-interpretative’ reading modes characteristic ofacademic study.AUTHOR BIODATATIM MOORETim Moore works in the area of academic literacy at Swinburne University. His PhD was on thesubject of critical thinking in the disciplines. Along with research into the IELTS reading module,he and co-researcher, Janne Morton, have also conducted IELTS-funded research into the academicwriting module.JANNE MORTONJanne Morton works in the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne asa lecturer in ESL. She is currently completing her PhD in the area of socialization into disciplinarydiscourse. Her research interests include academic literacies, spoken genres, and second languagetesting and assessment.STEVE PRICESteve Price works at Swinburne University and has provided language support to tertiary levelstudents for many years with a particular interest in the development of disciplinary reading skills.He is currently researching how law students from non-English speaking backgrounds engage withcommon law discourses.186 www.ielts.org