IELTS Research Reports

Anthony Green and Roger Hawkey6.2 The experienced groupWith Anne acting taking the role of chair, the participants were asked to organise and implement thejoint editing session as they would a routine IELTS editing meeting (without further intervention fromthe research team). The intention was to prepare at least one text and set of items for the next stage inthe test production process: pretesting.Given the constraints on time, it was anticipated that it might not prove possible to go through thefull process with all of the texts. In the event, the group were able to carry out the full editing processwith Jane’s text and looked closely at the text and one of the three item sets for both William’s andElizabeth’s submissions. The group spent an intensive 85 minutes on Jane’s text and items - themajority of the time (66 minutes) being devoted to the items. This seemed to the participants to bequite typical of the degree of attention that might usually be given to a submission in an editingmeeting, although the point was made that a number of the issues might have been identified in a preeditingsession: a step that was not included in this project.The 85 minutes spent on Jane’s submission compares with a total of 68 minutes spent on the othertwo submissions considered at the meeting (29 minutes on William’s and 39 minutes on Elizabeth’s).Because of the time constraints and because is not usual for the chair of an editing meeting to leadthe evaluation of her own submission, Anne’s was not addressed at the meeting, although her text isconsidered in Section 6 above. As with the non-experienced writers, the following summary focuses,qualitatively and inductively on key points raised.In each case, the group began by commenting on a text, suggesting changes which were noted by thechair. They then looked in detail at the related items, agreeing on and noting changes before passing onto the second writer’s work.Jane text editingThere was some discussion about the meaning of the text and the nature of the automated systemsdescribed. For example, the use of ‘scheduled’, ‘selective’ and ‘sift’ in the first paragraph causedsome confusion with discussion about whether it was the machines or human experts selecting andsifting material. Elizabeth asked whether others shared her understanding that the ‘CONE’ systemwas partly and ‘ACONE’ entirely autonomous. William sought to clarify the roles of the universitypartners in the study and this question was discussed at some length. Anne queried the ordering of theunits used in describing the camera’s focal range in the fifth paragraph: 10m to 40mm. William alsoquestioned whether this was accurate as 40mm seemed very short. It was agreed that the figuresshould be checked.A number of proof reading errors were identified. For example, William found an intrusive comma inline 3. Problems were also noted with the formatting of the text and the appearance of abbreviationsfor measures. It was agreed that the names of the universities involved in the research should bestandardised and the order of their listing standardised.Some issues were identified concerning technical vocabulary: Anne suggested glossing ‘GPS’ in thethird paragraph and this was agreed.A number of changes were intended to improve the coherence of the text:■■There were questions relating to the paragraphing. Elizabeth suggested having the firstsentence as a subheading as it seemed not to relate closely to what followed. This was312 www.ielts.org