IELTS Research Reports

Anthony Green and Roger HawkeyIn the next phase - recognisable as Salisbury’s (2005) concerted phase - all of the writers carried out aniterative process of editing the text and developing the items. Unlike the writers in Salisbury’s (2005)study, who were devising scripts for tests of listening comprehension, these writers could not be saidto have started from their items in writing their texts. However, as observed by Salisbury (2005) in herstudy, the experienced writers seemed to have a repertoire of gambits for efficiently exploiting theirsource texts and paid attention to task type in text selection. They also paid attention to potential itemsduring the initial exploratory phase - highlighting or making notes on testable material. While theuntrained writers selected material that was already close to the appropriate length, trained writer textschose much longer pieces then progressively cut out passages that seemed to repeat information orthat included elements that would not be tested. The extent of editing and the desire to avoid repetitionperhaps explains why the texts analysed in Weir et al (2009a) displayed relatively high type: tokenratios in comparison with undergraduate textbooks (indicative of a wide range of vocabulary use andrapid progression of ideas).As a first step in what Salisbury (2005) calls the refining phase, the experienced group favouredattempting the task themselves after an intervening period (although deadlines sometimes limitedthe opportunities for this). The non-experienced writers also reported attempting their own tasks, butMary and Victoria additionally asked friends to respond to their tasks and so were able to obtain somefurther feedback on how well the items were working before coming to the editing session.7.2 The textsThe non-experienced writers drew on very similar sources to their experienced counterparts. BothMary and Elizabeth chose articles from New Scientist articles while both Mary and Jane selectedtexts concerning robot technology. Victoria’s text was an article from a popular science magazineconcerning dreams while Anne’s was an article from a popular science magazine concerning sleep.Readability statistics for the two groups were also very similar. The easiest and most difficult textsaccording to the Flesch Kincaid and Coh-Metrix measures were both produced by experienced writers(Jane and Elizabeth respectively).Both groups expressed a concern that the selection of topics in the test may be rather narrow. Wherethe non-experienced group saw this as a constraint imposed by the need to produce IELTS-like texts,the experienced group saw it as a by-product of the need for accessibility and cultural neutrality:arts texts tend to assume or require background knowledge in a way that popular psychology ortechnology-based texts do not.Members of both groups edited their (magazine) texts to make them more ‘academic’ in style andtone and less journalistic. All of the texts involved plausibly academic topics presented for the generalreader. All writers in both groups edited to eliminate (some) vocabulary on the grounds that it waseither too technical for the general reader, too colloquial to be appropriate in an academic text or tooinfrequent and so difficult for IELTS candidates. Both groups included factual texts (Mathilda’s texton cities and Jane’s wildlife cameras text) and opinion texts (William’s essay on literature, Elizabeth’ssleep text, Anne’s laughter test from the experienced group; Mary’s robot’s text and Victoria’s dreamstext from the untrained group).Members of both groups also sought to avoid potentially divisive or offensive issues and to eliminateculturally specific knowledge from their texts. Mary removed a paragraph from her text concerningwar. The experienced group was concerned to avoid religious issues in William’s text.322 www.ielts.org