IELTS Research Reports

Guoxing Yu, Pauline Rea-Dickins and Richard Kielyprocesses and strategies they had used to complete AWT1 tasks and the problems as shown in thethink-aloud protocols that the participants should try to avoid. In particular, it was emphasized thatthey should describe only the information contained in the graphs and make comparisons wherenecessary but should try to avoid making unnecessary personal conclusions not based on the datapresented in the graphs (see also 4.3.4). The students were also reminded of the dos and don’ts assuggested by Cambridge ESOL, and some frequently used words and phrases for describing theprocess and trend of decreasing and increasing, and those for describing comparisons. In addition, theywere given 12 AWT1 tasks using a variety of graphs for them to practise after the training session orat least to make themselves familiar with the different types of graphs that might be used in AWT1tasks. A formal training booklet (which is available from the authors upon request) including the keymessages mentioned above was provided for every participant.STAGE 4: Second round of collection of the participants’ cognitive processes (i.e., post-training)1 Following the same procedure of Stage 2, although no training on think-aloud was giventhis time as they were by then more familiar with this data collection tool, the participantswere asked to think aloud while completing the second set of 4 AWT1 tasks (Appendix 5,Set B). The four tasks are: (i) a diagram showing the sequence of the events leading to thebroadcast of a documentary by a TV programme (hereafter B-broadcast), (ii) a numericaltable and the related coloured world map showing the amount of CO2 emissions by thetop eight countries (hereafter B-map), (iii) column and pie charts describing grams ofCO2 emissions per passenger/km of different transport methods and the EU funds spenton them (hereafter B-EUfund), and (iv) a line graph showing the individuals viewingshare of the major TV channels in the UK (hereafter B-viewing).2 Students were also asked to evaluate the training and their experience in this project andprovide any suggestions on AWT1 preparation. This was not originally planned in ourresearch proposal, but we feel it can serve the central purpose of understanding how thetraining may have affected their cognitive process of taking AWT1 tasks (i.e., RQ4). Thestudents filled in the questionnaire (see Appendix 6) either right after the final AWT1 task,or completed it at home and returned it the next day when they came for the interviews.STAGE 5: interviewsDue to 6 dropouts in total, we decided to modify the original plan of individually interviewing 50% ofthe 24 participants based on their gender, graphicacy and writing abilities. Instead, we interviewed all18 participants. The participants were asked to comment on (i) the ways their cognitive processes mayhave be affected by the different graphic prompts, (ii) the relationship between their graph familiarityand comprehension and writing abilities, and (iii) whether their cognitive processes might havechanged due to the training (see Appendix 7 for a list of the questions that guided the semi-structuredinterviews). The interviews ranged from 45-68 minutes each, conducted in English and/or Chinese asappropriate and audio-recorded.In summary, this research comprised five distinct stages and adopted a layered and progressiveapproach to data collection. The data included the participants’ academic writing performance withoutthinking aloud, graph familiarity and comprehension (Stage 1), AWT1 performances of differentgraph prompts while thinking aloud (Stages 2 & 4). Between Stages 2 and 4 (i.e., Stage 3), training onAWT1 was provided to the participants. At Stage 5, interviews with the participants were conducted,aiming to probe further their cognitive processes of taking AWT1 tasks.384 www.ielts.org