IELTS Research Reports

Anthony Green and Roger HawkeyWhich of your sections you happiest with?Jane Anne William ElizabethUnusually, I wrote all threetasks simultaneouslyThere were problems ofoverlap with other tasks.Questions 1, and 16 were allabout Blake and Wordsworth:a bit problematic and otherpeople might feel they are notindependent of each otherParagraphs F and H eachonly have one item, which isnot idealSomething like a summaryof one paragraph can be tooeasy because the answersare all together. Identifyingthe paragraph containinginformation where it’s inrandom order and could beanywhere in the text requiresyou to scan the whole text foreach individual item whichseems to me to be far moredifficult for candidatesTable 2. Experienced Participants’ descriptions of the item writingprocesswriting processThe need to scan the wholetext three times for differentinformation seems unfair:‘you wouldn’t usually scan [atext] three times for differentsorts of information’ – wehave had advice to cut downon that now. I usually try tofocus two of my tasks onspecific information and havea third one that is more of anoverview.This text does have onebasic idea and really thewhole text is saying that. Iwas testing the support forthe idea.There is a stage when I think‘this is going to work and I’mnot going to dump this.I thought there were enoughdiscrete words that wouldmake a key to supportmultiple choice.I am very conscious ofhow much of a text I amexploiting.294 www.ielts.org