IELTS Research Reports

An empirical investigation of the process of writing Academic Readingtest items for the International English Language Testing Systemlanguage’. A good IELTS text would be propositionally dense, but not overly technical. OccasionallyAnne might add information from a second source to supplement a text – Elizabeth and William (andVictoria of the non-experienced group) had also done this for IELTS, but not Jane.Initially Anne would carry out ‘a form of triage’ on the text, forming an impression of which sectionsshe might use as ‘often the texts are longer than we might need’ and considering ‘which tasks wouldbe suitable’. Once she had settled on a text, she would type it up and it would be at this point that shecould arrive at a firmer conclusion concerning its suitability. On occasion she would now find that sheneeded to take the decision – ‘one of the hardest decisions to take’ – that ‘in fact those tasks aren’tgoing to fit’ and so have to reject the text. Anne saw personal interest in a text as being potentially adisadvantage when it came to judging its quality: ‘it blinds you the fact that it isn’t going to work’.Elizabeth reported that she asked herself a number of questions in selecting a text: ‘is the contentappropriate for the candidature? Is the text suitable for a test, rather than for a text book? Will itsupport a sufficient number of items?’ She considered that an ideal IELTS text would include, ‘a mainidea with a variety of examples rather than just one argument repeated’. Elizabeth reported that sheusually selected texts that were considerably longer than required. As she worked with a text, shewould highlight points to test and make notes about each paragraph, using these to identify repetitionsand to decide on which item type to employ. Passages which were not highlighted as a source for anitem could then be cut.Like Anne, Elizabeth also reported looking for texts between commissions: ‘you sort of live searchingfor texts the whole time’. On this occasion, she too had a suitable text on file. In approaching a textshe reported that she considers the candidature for the test (an issue we return to later), the numberof items that could be generated and the ‘range of ideas’. Although she did not type up the text asAnne did, she made notes on it ‘per paragraph’ because this ‘helps to see if it’s the same ideas [beingrepeated in the text] or different ideas’. An ‘ideal [IELTS] text’ would ‘have a point to it, but thenillustrate it by looking at a number of different things; a main idea with examples or experimentsor that sort of thing rather than one argument’. On the basis of these notes she would then begin toassociate sections of text with task types so that, for example, ‘paragraphs one to three might supportmultiple choice questions… there might be a summary in paragraph five, there’s probably a whole textactivity like matching paragraphs or identifying paragraph topics’.At this point Elizabeth would begin cutting the text, initially removing material that could obviouslynot be used including ‘taboo topics, repetitions, that sort of thing’ but would still expect to have alonger text than would be required. With the text and the developing items displayed together on asplit screen she would then highlight sections of text and produce related items. After completing theitems, she might then remove sections of text that had not been highlighted, ‘fairly stringently’ to endup with a text of the right length.William had decided to write about a ‘particular topic’, but ‘wasted over two hours’ looking for asuitable text on this topic on the internet. He was unable to ‘come up with anything that was longenough or varied enough’. Instead he turned to a text that he had previously considered using for acommission, but had not submitted partly because of doubts about the perceived suitability of thetopic (‘too culturally bound to Britain’) and the need to explain the names being discussed (Blake,Wordsworth). The text was somewhat problematic because of its length so that William ‘ended upnot only cutting it a lot, but rewriting parts of it and moving things around more than [he] would aimto do’. As a result of this rewriting ‘there was a risk that it might end up not being as coherent as itought to be’; a risk that might, in a regular IELTS commission, have led him to reject the text. WilliamIELTS Research Reports Volume 11289