IELTS Research Reports

The cognitive processes of taking IELTS Academic Writing Task 14.2.1 Comprehending non-graphically presented task instructionsAll the participants started to read the non-graphically presented task instructions first, presented before theactual graph(s). However, not all text instructions received the same attention or effort from the participants.They seemed to be very strategic in allocating their time to different components of the task instructions. Itis interesting to note that all of the participants skipped the first line (i.e., You should spend about 20 minuteson this task) and the last line (Write at least 150 words) of the task instructions, although both sentenceswere clearly marked in bold. This may be largely because the participants were already familiar with thesetwo specific task requirements – time allowance and the expected length of their writings.What the participants repeatedly read and re-read at different stages of completing the tasks were twosentences. The first was the summary-like sentence about the graph (e.g., The following graph showsthe UK CO2 emissions by end users from 1970 to 2004 in Task A:UKCO2, The following map andtable show the amount of CO2 emission by the top 8 countries in Task B:Map). This introductorysentence gave the participants a clear lead as to what the following graph was all about (i.e., thetopic or the theme of the graph), and therefore may have facilitated the participants to process theinformation contained in the graph (see 4.2.2). However, the summary-like sentence served only as anentry point, in other words, the participants still had to work out what else they should focus on whenlooking for the main features and making comparisons. For example, Participant K reflected in theinterview on the summary-like sentence in Task A: Instruction:Extract 1I read the direction, it says different age group. Now that it says different age group in thetask direction, so I wondered if it is necessary to figure out and mention the differences withreference to different age groups. After writing about the total length of the bars, i.e., thetotal number of intended instruction hours, I didn’t know if it is necessary also to write aboutthe differences between countries in the different age groups. (Participant K)In Section 4.2.3 we report on how the non-graphic task instructions were re-presented or re-producedin the actual writings.The second sentence – “summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features,and make comparisons where relevant” – was in fact the same for all AWT1 tasks. Why didn’t theparticipants skip this sentence as they skipped the sentences on time allowance and expected lengthbecause they had already known that this was exactly the same requirement for AWT1 tasks –summarise main features and make comparisons? Contrary to our anticipation that the participantswould pay less attention to this sentence after they became more familiar with the AWT1 taskrequirement, we noticed that there were more occurrences of re-reading of this sentence in the thinkaloudprotocols of the second set of four tasks than the first four tasks. Data from the interviewsand end-of-project evaluation (Appendix 6) indicated that this was largely attributable to the shorttraining (see data collection in Stage 3). Before the training, the participants had a strong tendency tointerpret what they observed in the graphs and try to find the reasons behind the data. At the trainingsession, we explicitly pointed out that the main task was to describe rather than to interpret the data,in other words, the main task was to summarise and make comparisons rather than make personalinterpretations based primarily on prior domain knowledge. Therefore, the participants were probablymade more aware of this requirement in the second four tasks after the training, and they might haveused re-reading this sentence as a kind of constant reminder to themselves that their major task wasto summarise and make comparisons of what are in the graphs, but not to involve too much personalinterpretation (see 4.3.4 on the coachability of AWT1 tasks).IELTS Research Reports Volume 11389