IELTS Research Reports

Guoxing Yu, Pauline Rea-Dickins and Richard KielyTables do not require a complex mapping of syntactic symbols to semantic information. The semanticinformation is read directly from the table. This greatly reduces the information load in STM (i.e. shortterm memory, added by the authors) when the queries are simple. However, for complex comparisonsof trends, tables require the reader to look at several entries in the table and make mental calculationsand comparisons among these values. These intermediate values are held in STM during thecomparison. In contrast, line graphs … show trend information without the scanning and interpolationof intermediate data. Slopes are perceived readily from a line graph (Lohse 1993: 360).Similarly, Vessey (1991) argued that graphic representations emphasize spatial information, whiletabular representations emphasize symbolic information, hence it is more time-consuming to processtabular information. However, Vessey (1991) further suggested that so long as there is cognitive fit(i.e. matching between the nature of the representation, the process and the nature of the task) eachrepresentation, whether graphic or tabular, would lead to both quicker and more accurate problemsolving. In case of AWT1 tasks, as all participants were required to describe whatever graphic andtabular information they were given, therefore the level of cognitive fit varied from participant toparticipant, and from task to task. The cognitive demands for processing tabular information may beparticularly high for writing tasks such as AWT1 as it requires not only locating and extracting specificinformation but also integrating and identifying the overall patterns and making comparisons fromthe tabular information which may not be readily available from the table per se. The participantshad to work out the patterns by themselves, through a series of calculations and comparisons in rowsand columns of the statistical table. They felt that the statistical table on USA oil imports was notstraightforward, as several participants commented, for example:Extract 2The oil statistics, it takes a long time to understand the information, to understand whatit means….I was really puzzled, trying to work out what it means. It is quite exercising.(Participant T)Extract 3The statistics look very much the same, and I found it very difficult to present the keyinformation from the table. But the line graphs, bar graphs and pie graphs are relativelystraightforward and vivid. (Participant U)When the tabular information is presented in conjunction with other graphic prompts, e.g., Task B:Mapwhich used the world map and a statistical table with fewer data points than the statistical table in TaskA:Oil, the cognitive demands for processing tabular numerical information seemed to be reduced. Onaverage, the scripts of Task B:Map received the second highest mean score (6.36) among the eight tasks.The visual assistance of the world map in colour might have assisted the reading and the interpretationof the numerical data contained in the table. In addition, the fewer data points of this table might haverendered itself more manageable than the statistical table about US oil imports from 15 countries inJune and July of 2008 and July 2007 and Year to Date of 2007 and 2008. The difficulty of this complexstatistical table in Task A:Oil was further increased because of one particular phrase – Year to Date. Allthe participants knew these three words separately, but none of them knew exactly the statistical meaningof YTD. Similarly in Task B:Viewing, some participants seemed to have difficulty in understandingwhat MCH (multi-channel) meant. It seems that a single phrase in the accompanying text of a graphcould increase substantially the difficulty level of the graph. Coupled with the higher cognitive demandsof statistical tables per se, the participants’ lower familiarity with processing tables of numerical data394 www.ielts.org