IELTS Research Reports

Tim Moore, Janne Morton and Steve PriceIn asserting these distinctions, a common theme among this group related to the importance of studentsreading to understand certain key concepts in the discipline, and to be able to show their understandingof these. This was felt by some to be a quite basic difference between the two formats:ARCHITECTURE: I think a difference is that we want students to pull out key conceptsfrom paragraphs. In IELTS it seems they are given the concepts and just need to matchthese up.PHYSICS: In Physics, the majority of material in the text is trying to explain concepts andalso explain problem-solving strategies, and this is what we want [students] to get from theirreading. The IELTS tasks seem more arbitrary in what they pick out from the text … andseem to be mainly about pattern recognition.One other gap commented on was the lack of connection with processes of writing on the IELTSreading test. Several informants discussed the considerable challenges on their courses in gettingstudents to understand and also adopt acceptable use of reading material in their written work. Theview here was that this was perhaps an aspect of academic reading that could somehow be givenexplicit coverage in the test.MANAGEMENT: [To use sources appropriately] students need to see concrete examplesto know what is acceptable and what’s not … I can’t see much evidence in the test of thisaspect of academic study, and this would certainly be helpful.Whilst identifying certain differences in the skills in the two domains, informants in this second groupacknowledged that it would be most difficult to create a generic reading test that could accommodatein any systematic way the various discipline-bound forms of reading identified. One informant alsothought it necessary to be realistic about the extant reading skills that students bring to their courses,and was sure that the responsibility for the teaching of any discipline-specific skills lay squarely withacademics on their particular programs.HISTORY: We just can’t make too many assumptions nowadays about our students andtheir capacities. And this is irrespective of their background. … the onus is clearly on us todevelop these capacities within our courses.A final group – a considerably smaller one than the previous two – had a more critical view of the testand its likely usefulness. This group was confined to just two informants – those from the humanitiesdisciplines of Media Studies and Linguistics. The general view expressed by these two was thatthe construct of reading in the test was somehow at odds with that which operated in each of theirdiscipline areas, and that, as a result, the test risked giving students a misleading impression of thenature of academic reading. Their takes on this disjuncture were slightly different ones. For the MediaStudies lecturer the problem was at heart an epistemological one:MEDIA STUDIES: In the tasks on the test, it seems to me that students are really justdealing with information. That’s the way these texts are presented. And then it’s mainlyabout regurgitating the information. This author is saying this. But it doesn’t allow studentsoptions to engage with the material. Whether they think what is being said in the text is validor not. I see it as pretty low level.244 www.ielts.org