IELTS Research Reports

Learning to play the ‘classroom tennis’ well:IELTS and international students in teacher educationRyan and Viete (2009, p 304), however, have a quite different perspective on the issue of internationalstudents in Australian higher education. They point to contradictions in the internationalisation ofAustralian higher education in which pedagogies emphasise the ‘one-way flow of knowledge fromteachers to students … (Whereby) Western knowledge is legitimised as international in focus, yetthere is no indication that the focus is developing through genuine intercultural dialogue’. Learning byinternational students ‘is expected to conform to seemingly immutable and often implicit norms laiddown by the (Western, English language) academy’ (Ryan and Viete, 2009, p 304). They report that thoseoperating within this pedagogical framework construct international students as ‘deficient’ and advocate‘remedial’ approaches in the areas of academic literacy and English language skills. The debate thusfocuses on blaming the problem on the English-language proficiency of international students. However,Ryan and Viete (2009, p 306) argue that this position misrecognises the problem, noting that althoughinternational students ‘will have been screened by an International English Language Testing System(IELTS) exam and are assumed to have adequate language proficiency to participate in their new learningenvironments, due to the disjuncture between the test and the demands of disciplinary discourses withinthe university, these may in fact not be a good indicator of their ability to operate within the language ofAnglophone academia. … English-language study … may not equip them well for the discipline-specificand often fast-paced language in lectures or tutorials, which is saturated with unfamiliar local knowledge,pronunciation and mores of dialogic exchange’. Though it is logical and necessary for English-speakingWestern academies to establish entry level English language requirements at an appropriate threshold,Ryan and Viete (2009, p 306) explain that the language proficiency threshold does not protect studentsagainst the complexity of academic reading and writing tasks and the cognitive overload studentsexperience in their new learning environment. According to Ryan and Viete (2009, p 309), localAnglophone students prefer to form study groups separate from international and immigrant students,and do not listen adequately to LBOTE students. Likewise, lecturers often do not invite LBOTE studentsto present knowledge to enrich understandings of topics under discussion. Ryan and Viete contend thatlecturers have not learnt to create pedagogies that give international students a sense of security in mixingwith locals and growing an expectation that their opinions and knowledge will be valued. Internationalstudents present opportunities for engaging different educational culture, intellectual heritages andtransnational knowledge networks. However, Ryan and Viete (2009, p 304) point to the absence ofreciprocity or mutuality in learning across intellectual cultures and to the absence of value being givento international students’ knowledge. International students find that ‘their own knowledge, linguisticallymediated as it is in another language, is seen as being of lesser value’ (Ryan and Viete, 2009, p 307)They are concerned with how students are taught to deal with academic tasks which are new to them andwhich are often tacitly understood by academics in English-speaking Western academies. The issue isless a matter of LBOTE students’ general language proficiency than of supporting them in learning thetarget academic discourse. For O’Loughlin and Arkoudis (2009), this is a matter of gaining legitimacywithin their disciplinary community of practice, which they find as particularly related to speaking.2.2 Perceptions of IELTS testingColeman et al (2003) undertook a study of student and staff perceptions of IELTS in Australia, UK andChinese institutions. Staff and students were surveyed with respect to: their knowledge, perceptionsand attitudes; beliefs about the predictive value of IELTS with regard to university demands; theappropriateness of entry levels, and awareness of unprincipled activities. Overall, Coleman et al foundthat the respondents perceived the IELTS test to have high validity, with students generally satisfiedwith the entry scores used by their institution. However, they found that staff wished to increase theirinstitution’s minimum IELTS entry score because they were less satisfied with the English languageabilities of international students.IELTS Research Reports Volume 1181