IELTS Research Reports

6 The cognitive processes of taking IELTSAcademic Writing Task OneAuthorsGuoxing YuPauline Rea-DickinsRichard KielyUniversity of BristolGrant awarded Round 13, 2007An investigation of the cognitive processes of candidates taking IELTS Academic Writing Task One(AWT1) with different graphic prompts at two time points – before short training on how to do AWT1tasks, and after. It explores the extent to which candidates’ cognitive processes are affected by the useof different graphs, their graphic skills and English writing abilities, and by the training.ABSTRACTThis research investigated the cognitive processes of candidates taking IELTS Academic WritingTask One (AWT1) with different graphic prompts at two different time points – before short trainingon how to do AWT1 tasks, and post-training. It explored the extent to which candidates’ cognitiveprocesses are affected by the use of different graphs, their graphic skills and English writing abilities,and the short training. A grounded and multi-layered case study approach was employed to collect dataon candidates’ cognitive processes. 24 intending IELTS candidates from a large Chinese universitycompleted eight AWT1 tasks while thinking aloud their processes of doing the tasks (four beforetraining and four after training) under examination conditions. Samples of their English writingabilities and graphicacy were also collected, as well as post-task interviews with all participants.The think-aloud protocols were analysed to identify the common patterns of cognitive processes. Amodel of cognitive processes was developed, consisting of three interrelated stages – comprehendingnon-graphically presented task instructions, comprehending graphic information and re-producinggraph comprehension in written discourse in English as a foreign language. This model guidedour analyses to address the four research questions: (1) How the participants processed the graphicinformation and how they followed the graphic conventions to re-produce their graph comprehensionin written discourse in English were affected by the types of graphs they read. Such effects of differentgraphic prompts on the cognitive processes were clearly evidenced in the mean scores of the writings,in the use of vocabulary, and in whether and how they would make comparisons or trend assessments,following the graphic conventions in presentation, interpretation and re-production. (2) Althoughgraph familiarity did not seem to affect task performance in terms of the marks of the writings, theparticipants clearly expressed some potential psychological impact of graph familiarity on their taskperformance. (3) There is a strong correlation between AWT1 writing performance and writing abilityas measured via topic-based argumentative essays. (4) The influence of the special training was strong,IELTS Research Reports Volume 11373