IELTS Research Reports

Tim Moore, Janne Morton and Steve Priceengage in some reflective way with this material. Such a distinction is well-illustrated in the followingquotation from one informant.ARCHITECTURE: Some of the texts in the subject are difficult so we typically set someguide questions to help [students] pick out what we see as the key points in the reading. Butwe also want them to reflect on what they have read and always relate it somehow to theirdesign work.In the analysis of our corpus, we observed two main types of interpretative tasks around this morelocal material: i) tasks requiring students to show how a concept or idea in their reading could beutilised in their work in the discipline (application), and ii) tasks requiring some assessment of thevalidity, worth and so on of an idea, or concept (evaluation).Application tasksThe first of these task types, the ‘application type’, was the more common in the corpus, with instancesidentified in a range of discipline areas. In the following task, taken from the Architecture subject, wesee exemplification of the principle enunciated above by the lecturer in this subject (Sample A19). Asoutlined in the task rubric, students here need first of all to consider certain concepts presented in theircourse reader (in this case ‘efficient structures found in nature’), and then for them to reflect on howthese concepts might be applied in their ‘future design work’.Structures in natureThe chapter Introduction to Building Structures gives a good overview of the structural systemsyou have been learning about. The author also looks at how efficient structures found in natureare good case studies in which to examine structural principles.Make some notes from your reading on several of these structures, and suggest how you thinkthe concepts discussed could be useful to you in your future design work.Sample A19. Exercise task - ArchitectureThe following are additional tasks that have this focus on the application of key disciplinary concepts(Sample A20 and A21). In the Economics task (A20), students need to draw on a particular economicmodel (‘Solow-Swan model’) as a basis for analysing a particular economic state-of-affairs (orrather a state-of-affairs imputed by a particular economic commentator). A similar configuration isevident in the Physics task (A21), where students need to draw on a concept in the literature (‘gelelectophoresis’), as a basis for assessing the ‘accuracy’ of an example constructed by themselves.Consider the following statement made by a leading Australian economic commentator:Where once our economic growth was determined solely by the number of machines, today it isdetermined by our ability to generate new ideas and develop new ways of producing output.Using the Solow-Swan model, assess this statement.Sample A20. Exercise task - Economics236 www.ielts.org