IELTS Research Reports

Wayne Sawyer and Michael Singheither case, improvement of proficiency would not contribute substantially to a better academicperformance (Vinke and Jochems, 1993, p 282). These researchers suggested that additional researchwas needed to determine what variables account for international students’ academic success orfailure, so that ‘criteria may be set accordingly and appropriate measures may be taken to raise thechance of international students being academically successful in an English-medium instructionalsetting’(Vinke and Jochems, 1993, p 284).Cotton and Conrow (1998) reviewed a number of previous studies into the relationship betweenvarious English proficiency test results and academic outcomes, finding that the number of studieswhich found no statistical significance was roughly equal to the number which found significantcorrelations, while others yielded either inconclusive or mixed results. They concluded that therelationship between English proficiency and academic outcome was more ambiguous than one mightinitially suppose. Graham (cited in Cotton and Conrow 1998, p 75) explained the reasons for this thus:First of all, there has been continued debate about the exact nature of language proficiency; secondly,the difficulties of testing language proficiency and the extent to which it could be measured with a highdegree of reliability and validity; thirdly, the moderating variables which affect student performancein the testing situation and a number of intervening variables which affect students’ academicperformance, finally, the definition of academic success is ambiguous and is open to interpretation andhard to define.One important study cited by Cotton and Conrow was the Validation Project for the (previous) ELTSconducted by Criper and Davies (1988) which sought to investigate not only predictive validity butalso the construct, content and concurrent validity of ELTS. Criper and Davies concluded that thecontribution of language proficiency to academic outcome is about 10%, a correlation of 0.3. Thissuggested that language does contribute to academic success but does not play a major part. Cottonand Conrow (1998) themselves tested the predictive validity of IELTS at the University of Tasmania.In correlating IELTS with students’ Grade Point Averages (GPAs), only the reading subtest had amoderate positive correlation with academic results and in the case of the speaking subtest therewas a negative correlation (Cotton and Conrow, 1998, p 92). Staff ratings of students’ academicperformance showed a weak positive correlation between the reading and writing subtests andacademic performance. Staff ratings were then correlated with GPAs and these showed a reasonablystrong correlation (r=0.73). In the second semester of study by the students under investigation,there appeared a link between IELTS reading and writing subtest scores and students’ self-ratings ofacademic performance. While no significant correlations were found for IELTS global scores, thereappeared to be weak correlations between the reading and writing subtest scores with two of thethree measures of academic outcomes. The reading subtest scores in particular were better able topredict subsequent academic performance. Cotton and Conrow (1998, p 109) concluded that languageproficiency alone was no guarantee of success as other variables may have equal or more importance.Dooey and Oliver (2002) studied the predictive validity of IELTS in Faculties of Business, Scienceand Engineering. Correlations between the students’ semester-weighted averages (SWAs) and IELTSscores were calculated for the entire group and by discipline. Dooey and Oliver cited previousargument that students who scored higher on a standard English test would have a greater chance offuture academic success, though some previous researchers had argued that it is mainly at low levelsof proficiency that language makes a difference. Dooey and Oliver (2002) also found that Englishlanguage proficiency was only one among many factors that affect academic success. They concludedthat there was little evidence for the validity of IELTS as a predictor of academic success, although84 www.ielts.org