IELTS Research Reports

The cognitive processes of taking IELTS Academic Writing Task 1convention or template that they already know or are comfortable with. Unfamiliarity however couldprobably create a kind of anxiety and insecurity (see also Participant I’s comment above).Extract 16For example, the map task, as I haven’t come across this type of graph, I found it difficult.For familiar tasks, you would know how to write the beginning paragraph, the bodyparagraph and the conclusion paragraph. For unfamiliar graphs, you don’t know how tostart, how to develop your writing and how to end your writing. You don’t know where theentry point for this kind of unfamiliar tasks is. … [Researcher: How would you start then?]If I had not come across a particular type of graph, I would not have a model to follow, andthen I would have to follow my instinct to write… (Participant R)Furthermore unfamiliarity may also present test takers with some real challenges in processingand writing about the graphic information, particularly when they are trying to integrate their priorknowledge with the graphic information presented. For example, Participant W commented that:Extract 17Some graphs (e.g. the world map) may also present challenges, especially as I may be lackof some knowledge of geography and history. I was thinking if the different geographicaland economic positions of these countries affect their amount of CO2 emissions. As I’m notfamiliar with the geographical positions of these countries in the world map, this could bea challenge to me. [Researcher: If you had not known Alaska belongs to America, wouldyou think it is another country in the world map?] Yes. In fact, I did ask X [Participant R]yesterday what country is this one (referring to Alaska). To me, when I received the taskswith the map, I was a bit nervous. But apart from that, it was OK. (Participant W)Participant W further explained her belief that test takers may have different levels of graphfamiliarity, but it is their writing ability that matters the most in the AWT1 tasks.Extract 18It is inevitable that some students may be highly familiar with certain graphs, although hisor her writing may not be strong. It is possible that this student may do well because he orshe is highly familiar with the graph; this kind of situation is possible, and I also think thiskind of situation is inevitable. However, generally speaking, his or her writing is a positivereflection of his or her writing ability. (Participant W)After all, these largely positive attitudes towards the potential impact of graph familiarity on testperformance may be due to the fact these participants had high graph familiarity (see Figure 3).Indeed, as Participant T acknowledged: “I don’t think there are many graphs which are unfamiliarto us. In the textbooks we study there are graphs”. To what extent will this view on the potentialrelationship between graph familiarity and test performance be evidenced in the actual testperformance?Next we ran a series of regression analyses on graph familiarity and performance of each AWT1 task(including the first one without think-aloud, see Appendix 2), the average performance of the firstfour tasks, the average performance of the second four tasks, and the average performance of all eighttasks under think aloud conditions. No significant correlation was found between graph familiarityand test performance. We also ran ANOVA to test if each AWT1 task was affected by the participants’IELTS Research Reports Volume 11399