IELTS Research Reports

An empirical investigation of the process of writing Academic Readingtest items for the International English Language Testing SystemElizabeth’s textTime to Wake Up to the Facts about Sleep by Jim HorneNew Scientist: published on 16 October 2008 pages 36 to 38In common with Mary, Elizabeth, chose a source text from the New Scientist. As was the case forAnne, this was a text that Elizabeth already held on file. The text questioned popular myths aboutpeople’s need for more sleep. Resembling the texts chosen by Victoria, Mary, Jane and Anne, thisarticle reports on recent research, although in this case the author of the text is one of the researchersand refers to a study carried out by ‘My team’ (the IELTS text retains this). The author argues againstperceptions that people living in modern societies are deprived of sleep and draws on a range ofresearch evidence, including his own study, to support his view. Like William’s, this is a text thatinvolves argumentation and is organised around justifying a point of view. Reflecting the personaltone of the original, Elizabeth retains the attribution by incorporating it into a brief contextualisingintroduction following the title: ‘Claims that we are chronically sleep-deprived are unfounded andirresponsible, says sleep researcher Jim Horne’.Elizabeth cut the 1,592 word source text by 60% to 664 words, making 54 edits. Like Mary, Elizabethcuts references to other texts – ‘(Biology Letters, vol 4, p 402)’ – and removes a number of technicalterms: she removes the technical ‘metabolic syndrome’, but retains ‘metabolism’. She also chooses tokeep ‘obesity’, ‘insomnia’, ‘precursor’, ‘glucose’ and the very infrequent ‘eke’. Elizabeth’s source textincluded relatively few academic and very low frequency words and more high frequency words thanthe texts chosen any other writer (Figure 1 and Figure 2).Like Anne and Victoria, Elizabeth replaces informal journalistic touches with more formal alternatives– ‘shut eye’ becomes ‘sleep’ (although ‘snooze’ is retained), ‘overcooked’ becomes ‘exaggerated’ (but‘trotted out’ is retained).The most intensively edited section of the text is an extended quotation from a researcher. As was thecase for Anne and Jane, clarity and style seem to be important. Compare the following:Original text: We did this by asking when they usually went to sleep and at what time theywoke up, followed by, ‘How much sleep do you feel you need each night?’IELTS text: We asked respondents the times when they usually went to bed and woke up, andthe amount of sleep they felt they needed each night.Another change may reflect the need for sensitivity to cultural diversity in IELTS mentioned byElizabeth in relation to her awareness of candidate background. The author’s assumption about theidentity of his readers seems to be reflected in one phrase that he uses: ‘we in the west’. In the IELTStext this becomes the less positioned ‘most people in the west’. Rhetorically, Elizabeth retains thefunction of the text as an opinion piece organised around justification of a point of view.The changes made in editing had the effect of making the text easier to read according to both theFlesch-Kincaid grade level estimate and the Coh-Metrix readability formula (Figure 3).IELTS Research Reports Volume 11307