IELTS Research Reports

Tim Moore, Janne Morton and Steve PriceQuestion 5-9.Look at the following statements (Questions 5-9), and the list of people in the box below.Match each statement with the correct person.Write the appropriate letter A-E in boxes 5-9 on the answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.A Michael KrausB Salikoko MufweneC Nicholas OstlerD Mark PagelE Doug WhalenSample statements:1. Endangered languages cannot be saved unless people learn to speak more than one language.2. The way we think may be determined by our language.Sample 4.2: Information–category match – scholar as categoryLevel of engagementInformation–category match items were generally found to be concerned with the locating of fairlyspecific information in the reading passage (eg size of airport in Sample 4.1). A feature of these taskshowever, was that information often had to be retrieved from several different places in the text.Thus, for example, in the following item taken from the airport sample (Sample 4.1), test-takersneed to identify whether the following statement concerning size of airport pertains to just oneof the locations or both:(Which airport) has an area of over 1,000 hectaresCompletion of such an item thus necessitates engagement with several separate sections of thepassage, as follows:An island six kilometres long and with a total area of 1248 hectares is being created there.The new island of Chek Lap Kok, the site of Hong Kongs’s new airport, is 83% complete.As Chek Lap Kok rises however, another new Asian island is sinking back into the sea.This is 520 hectare island built in Osaka Bay, Japan that serves as a platform for the newKansai airport.Correct Response = Chek Lap Kok airport only (Option A)This particular characteristic of Information–category match tasks means that whilst engagement isgenerally at a local level, it is not as narrowly local as we have seen for other ‘specific information’task types eg True/False/Not given (see Figure 6).214 www.ielts.org