IELTS Research Reports

Tim Moore, Janne Morton and Steve PriceIn setting this task, the History lecturer explained that it was important for students not just to give“some simple blow-by blow recapitulation of the text”.HISTORY: What I stress to students is that they need to read chiefly with the purpose ofidentifying the author’s main argument. And the other part is then to identify the evidencethe author presents to support this argument. All this needs to come out in their summaries.Summaries of arguments – multiple textsA more common type of summary task was that requiring the summary of a number of texts, as inthe following two samples from Management and Media Studies. As in the History example above,the main focus of these tasks was for students to give an account of arguments contained within texts.In both the sample tasks below, a key component is for these arguments to be seen as part of a largerdebate – in the Management task (A15), it is one about how much globalisation has progressed asa phenomenon; in the Media Studies task (A16), it is a debate about different policy approaches tomedia ownership.The globalisation debateIn no more than 800 words, address the following question:What are the arguments for and against the idea that ‘the world has become flat’ in recentyears?Please base your discussion on readings for Week 3 and further research. You must meet thereferencing requirements listed below.Business in the global economySample A15. Assignment task – ManagementMedia ownershipWhat are some of the basic for and against arguments in the debate about abolishing the crossmedia ownership AND foreign ownership laws in Australia? Refer to at least 4 primary sourcesin your response.Sample A16. Assignment task – Media StudiesBoth lecturers were keen to stress that such tasks were really focused on developing the skill of accuratelyrepresenting the views of various writers on an issue. As the Management lecturer explained it:MANAGEMENT: Students often struggle in just seeing what the main points of a piece ofwriting are, to have the confidence to say: “Yes, this is what this person is saying, this is whatthey’re arguing”.This lecturer went on to explain that in such tasks, students were sometimes under themisapprehension that they should also be expressing their own view in the debate. For this lecturer, theability to provide a clear summary of ‘the arguments of others’ in the field was a basic foundationalskill, one which was then built on later in the course.234 www.ielts.org