IELTS Research Reports

Guoxing Yu, Pauline Rea-Dickins and Richard KielyAPPENDIX 1: CONSENT FORMDear Participant,Thank you for agreeing to participate in the Cog-Pro research project funded by British Councilthrough its IELTS Research Programmes (www.ielts.org) and carried out by the consultants from theUniversity of Bristol (www.bristol.ac.uk/education) in October and November 2008. This project aimsto gain better understanding of IELTS Academic Writing Task One (AWT1) that uses graphs as testprompts. The data collection for this research would involve you (in the time order):■■taking IELTS academic writing tasks 1 and 2,■■■■■■■■■ ■answering a questionnaire measuring your graph familiarity and comprehension,taking IELTS AWT1 tasks, while thinking aloud your test taking process,having free training on how to take IELTS AWT1 tasks provided by the consultants,taking IELTS AWT1 tasks again, while thinking aloud your test taking process,(some of you) being interviewed on a one-to-one basis on how you took the AWT1 tasksYour think-aloud and interviews will be audio-recorded. Your participation is voluntary and will not bepaid, but we will provide you with free training and assessment on AWT1 during data collection (seeabove). As a potential IELTS test takers, you will benefit from participating in this research. You havethe right to withdraw your participation any time if so you wish without any consequences, but we wouldlike to encourage you to work your best until the end of the project to maximize your learning benefits.We would like to ask for your consent formally, as recommended by the ethical guidelines for theconduct of research of International Language Testing Association (www.iltaonline.com) and BritishAssociation for Applied Linguistics (www.baal.org.uk). All data collected for this research (includingyour age, gender, graph familiarity, test performance, audio-recorded think-aloud protocols andinterviews) will be anonymised and used solely for this research in a fair and respectful manner, in itsresearch report and subsequent academic publications and disseminations. Your data will be protectedin accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998.We would be very grateful if you could read this consent form carefully and sign below, and if you dosign them, to indicate the manner in which you would like your contribution to be acknowledged inthe research report and any publications and disseminations based on this.Your Chinese name [in print] _________________ Signature________________ Date ___/___/___Please select either A or B for acknowledgement of contribution to this research.■■■■I would like acknowledgement and thanks expressed generically, i.e. to the students atZhejiang University. OR [please tick here ]I would like acknowledgement and thanks expressed to mention me explicitly, i.e. to thestudents at Zhejiang University, which includes (my name). [please tick here ]If you have any queries about the Cog-Pro project or this consent form, please get in touch.Best wishesGuoxing Yu, Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol414 www.ielts.org