IELTS Research Reports

An empirical investigation of the process of writing Academic Readingtest items for the International English Language Testing SystemWilliam text editingThe reference to the doctrine of ‘original sin’ in the second and seventh paragraphs was queried on thegrounds that this might be confusing to students from a non-Christian background. ‘Christian tradition’was replaced with ‘long held belief’. William argued that the term ‘sinful’ should be acceptablewithout glossing, but the religious implications were seen to make the text questionable. Alternativessuch as ‘wickedness’ and ‘guilt’ were considered, but rejected. Anne felt that ‘it would be very difficultto get round this, quite frankly’ because religion was considered a ‘taboo’ subject for IELTS. Williamobserved that ‘most history seems to be impossible’ because of the cultural element. Words suchas ‘church’ or ‘mosque’ could not, he felt, be used in IELTS. The question of how to eliminate thereligious element in the text was put to one side so that editing could proceed.Elizabeth and Jane both questioned the use of ‘ivory tower’. After a number of attempts at rewording,the sentence ‘Art was on the run; the ivory tower had become the substitute for the wished for publicarena’ was eliminated on the grounds that the idea had appeared in the previous sentence.The ‘dense’ nature of the text was seen to be a potential shortcoming and there was some confusionover the temporal progression of ideas. Elizabeth asked for clarification of ‘late’ C19th in Paragraph 7.William item editingThe group looked closely at William’s second set of questions (matching) and identified certain issues:■■■■Potential guessability: Jane had been able to guess items 8 and 10, but wondered whetherthese would be guessable for certain candidates. How far might candidates be expected toknow about the history of English literature?The stems for items 7 and 11 (‘Authors working prior to the late 18th century’ and ‘In theharsh society of the 19th century, some authors’) did not seem to fit well with the stemsfor items 8, 9 and 10 which (names or lists of names of individual authors)The conclusion of this session was that the text would probably have been returned to the writer at thepre-editing stage with comments on the cultural elements. The issues identified and communicated tothe writer would need to have been resolved before the text could have progressed to editing.Elizabeth’s text editingAll three other writers queried the inclusion, in paragraph 3, of ‘eke out the very last quantum ofsleepiness’, but Anne decided to delay revising this until the group came to address item 2, to whichit related. They also questioned ‘trotted out’ as being too colloquial. The latter was replaced with‘frequently put forward’. These were the only issues raised in relation to Elizabeth’s text.Elizabeth item editingItem 1 Anne had failed to find the correct answer, although William believed it was ‘stronglythere’. The use of ‘accurately reported’ in option C was questioned as it might refer tothe original reporting of the Stanford study by the researchers rather than to subsequentmisrepresentations of it. The use of ‘misunderstood’ seemed to address this. Anne suggestedreplacing ‘with’ in the question stem with ‘in’.Item 2William felt that option B could also be true. The use of ‘unrealistic’ was identified asproblematic and was replaced with Elizabeth’s suggestion of ‘stressful’. Here the focusmoved to finding an appropriate rewording of the problematic element in the text identifiedIELTS Research Reports Volume 11315