IELTS Research Reports

Construct validity in the IELTS Academic Reading testFurther settlement caused by …(12 rainfall )… will be prevented by the use of …(13 geotextile)…Gentler but more persistent bad weather – the downpours of the summer monsoon – is alsobeing taken into account. A mat-like material called geotextile is being laid across the island toseparate the rock and sand particles from being washed into the rock voids, and so causingfurther resettlement.We would say then that the ‘level of engagement’ for this task type relates to the span of text in thereading passage that is the subject of the summary. Some variation was noted in the length of thesesections, ranging from summaries of a single paragraph from the original passage, to coverage of upto three or four paragraphs. This variation in engagement level is captured on the ‘local – global’ scalein Figure 5.Type of engagementWhilst the level of engagement in the Gapped summary extends beyond the single proposition, theway in which test takers need to engage with material is arguably a fairly literal one. As was thecase with the Yes/No/Not given format, the task for test takers involves, in essence, the matching ofinformation from the reading passage with a paraphrased version of this information in the summary.Thus, the following items (taken from Sample 3.2) are completed by juxtaposing information in theitem with corresponding information in the original passage.Sample item 1Some corpora include a variety of language while others are focused on a 38 .Correct Response = particular linguistic featureRelevant section from reading passageSome corpora attempt to cover the language as whole, taking extracts from many kinds of texts;others are extremely selective, providing a collection of material that deals only with a particularlinguistic feature.Sample item 2The length of time the process takes will affect the 38 of the corpus.Correct Response = sizeRelevant section from reading passageThe size of the corpus depends on practical factors, such as the time available to collect,process and store the data: it can take up to several hours to provide an accurate transcriptionof a few minutes of speech.The relatively ‘literal’ form of engagement suggested by Gapped summary tasks is indicated in ouranalytical matrix shown in Figure 5.We note in passing that Gapped summary items can suffer from the problem of having items which itmay be possible to complete (or partially complete) without referring to the original reading passage(Alderson, 2000). This is a characteristic however, only of the ‘options provided’ variant of this tasktype. In the sample items below, for example, we can see that certain items among the providedIELTS Research Reports Volume 11211