IELTS Research Reports

Guoxing Yu, Pauline Rea-Dickins and Richard KielyType of Graph(s)MeanStatisticStd.ErrorTask A:Bar graph 18 5.00 7.00 6.00 .151 .642instructionTask A: layout Linear drawing 18 5.00 6.75 6.10 .115 .486Task A: oil Statistical table 18 4.75 7.00 5.93 .164 .696Task A: UK CO2 Line graph 18 4.75 7.25 6.03 .150 .635Task B:broadcastDiagram of sequenceof events17 4.75 7.25 6.00 .165 .679Task B: EU fund Bar graph and pie chart 17 4.75 7.00 6.04 .144 .595Task B: map World map and statistical table 18 5.25 7.25 6.36 .107 .456Task B: viewing Line graph 18 5.00 7.50 6.50 .181 .770Table 5. Performance in the eight AWT1 tasks with think-aloudOne student (# T) wrote down what she was thinking aloud, rather than a piece of writing as responding to the AWT1tasks. Her data were not included in the analyses of the participants’ performance, but included when analysing thecognitive processes.As shown in Table 5, the participants’ performance ranged from around 5 to 7.5, with mean scoresfrom 6 to 6.5.4.2 Developing a working model of cognitive processes for AWT1 tasksThe think aloud protocols and the post-task interviews were transcribed, coded and categorized in aqualitative data analysis computer programme – winMAX (Kuckartz 1998), to identify the patternsof the cognitive processes of completing AWT1 tasks. This grounded approach is appropriate tounderstand the complexity of the qualitative data of the cognitive processes (see 3.1). In order todevelop a working model of cognitive processes for AWT1 tasks, we analysed the think-aloudprotocols, cross-referencing to the other four main sources of data in this research project (i.e., AWT1scripts, interviews, graphicacy, and English writing abilities) and the theories of graph comprehension,especially the knowledge construction-integration model (see 1.3). Below we explain in detail theworking model which emerged from the data.The AWT1 tasks seemed to require three key consecutive processes:1 comprehending non-graphic task instructions2 comprehending (and interpreting) the components of graphs (see Section 1.3 on the keyfactors that can influence graph comprehension)3 re-presenting or re-producing the non-graphic and graphic information as continuousdiscourse in written form in English as a foreign language.Although these three processes were found to be iterative and to vary among the participantsin terms of, for example, the amount of time they spent on each process for different tasks andthe differential interactions with and influences on test performance of other factors such as theparticipants’ prior domain knowledge about the information presented in the graphs, the conventionsof graph presentation, graphic skills and English writing abilities, it seemed to be very clear thatthese three processes happened, first and foremost, in time order. However, overall, the whole processfor completing AWT1 tasks, as graph comprehension, is iterative and recursive, rather than serial(Carpenter & Shah, 1998).388 www.ielts.org