IELTS Research Reports

Lynda TaylorThe researchers make some useful recommendations for refining and strengthening the current approachand procedures for IELTS test material production. One recommendation suggests making the principlesand processes of test production more transparent and accessible to external stakeholders such as teachersand test preparation material publishers, particularly concerning the types of reading skill being targetedand the intention behind use of certain task-types. This could be done relatively easily by enhancing thepublic information already available on the IELTS website or through other communication channels,such as stakeholder seminars. Such an initiative would be consistent with the now well-establishedpolicy of the IELTS partners to communicate as much useful information as possible to test stakeholdersand it would assist those who prepare candidates for IELTS in ensuring the match, in terms of constructvalidity, between test preparation activities and what candidates actually encounter in the test. Perhapsmore important for the IELTS test developers is the recommendation offered in this study to extend anddeepen the training of the item writing teams. The insights gained through this study have undoubtedapplication in the initial training of new item writers when they join the team, helping them to understandhow texts and items can be reshaped for the test and to develop their own skills in this regard. They alsohave relevance for more experienced item writers who may benefit from additional training and guidanceon the detailed nature of the academic reading construct and how this is best operationalised through theIELTS Academic Reading module. The suggestion of using electronic tools for objective text analysis iscertainly worthy of consideration by the IELTS item writing teams; software such as Compleat LexicalTutor or Coh-Metrix could prove valuable practical tools for identifying or confirming key features ofacademic text genres and helping to ensure comparability across test versions. The point is also wellmade that test providers should keep item writers informed about relevant assessment issues, includingcurrent theoretical perspectives on the reading process, the nature of the reading demands on beginninguniversity students and the implications of these for assessment. Articulating the ability construct andapproaches to operationalising it for assessment, especially across different proficiency levels anddomains, is the underlying rationale for the series of skills-related volumes currently being published byCambridge ESOL and Cambridge University Press in the Studies in Language Testing series. Khalifaand Weir’s Examining Reading (2009) focuses on the assessment of second language reading ability,including the nature of reading at higher proficiency levels in academic and professional contexts. Thehope is that volumes such as these will increasingly be used in practical ways to develop item writers’understanding of the constructs that are the focus of assessment, thus enabling them to more fullyoperationalise the academic reading construct in IELTS and other tests.6 THE COGNITIVE PROCESSES OF TAKING IELTS ACADEMICWRITING TASK 1Like the previous two studies, the final study to appear in this volume, by Guoxing Yu, Pauline Rea-Dickins and Richard Kiely, maintains a focus on construct validity, this time in relation to the IELTSAcademic Writing test rather than the Academic Reading module. Their research aimed to understandthe cognitive processes of candidates taking Task 1 of the Academic Writing module with differentgraphic prompts at two different time points – before a short training session for completion of thetask, and post such training. In particular, the study set out to explore the extent to which candidates’cognitive processes are affected by the use of different graphic prompts, by their graphic skills (levelof graphicacy) and by their English writing abilities, as well as by a short training exercise. A groundedand multi-layered case study approach was employed to capture data on the cognitive processing of 18intending IELTS candidates recruited from a large Chinese university. Subjects were asked to completeeight Academic Writing Task 1s under examination conditions and to ‘think aloud’ their processes whiledoing so. Four tasks were completed prior to training, and four after training. Data on subjects’ Englishwriting abilities and graphic skills were also collected, along with post-task interviews. The thinkaloudprotocols were analysed using the qualitative data analysis program winMAX and the cognitive18 www.ielts.org