IELTS Research Reports

IntroductionIntroductionThe British Council / IELTS Australia joint-funded research program continues to make an importantcontribution to the ongoing development of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS).Studies funded directly by the British Council and IELTS Australia complement internal research andvalidation projects conducted or commissioned by Cambridge ESOL, the third IELTS partner. Togetherthey form an essential component of the overall quality management system for IELTS. In particular, thejoint-funded program reflects the IELTS partners’ long-standing commitment to a process of continuousimprovement to the test as well as to ongoing engagement with the wider academic research communityfor language education and assessment.The body of published research on IELTS continues to grow steadily. Volume 1 of the IELTS ResearchReports first appeared in 1998 and has been followed by nine further volumes (some available in a CD-ROM version). These publications were initially produced by IELTS Australia and later in collaborationwith the British Council. Copies can be sourced through the IELTS website: www.ielts.org . Volumes1-10 present in the public domain 55 of the empirical studies to have received grant funding from theIELTS partners since 1995. This growing library of IELTS research publications has been enhanced overthe past 5 years with volumes in the Studies in Language Testing series, published jointly by CambridgeESOL and Cambridge University Press. They include academic volumes authored or edited by RogerHawkey (2006), Tony Green (2007), Lynda Taylor and Peter Falvey (2007), and Alan Davies (2008).Details of all these titles can be found on the Cambridge ESOL website: www.cambridgeesol.org/whatwe-do/research/silt.In addition, many IELTS funded researchers have successfully published articles andpapers in peer-review journals or presented academic papers at applied linguistics and language testingconferences worldwide.IELTS Research Reports Volume 11 brings together a set of six empirical studies sponsored underRound 13 of the funded research program (2007). As with much other academic research, there canbe a lengthy passage from initial acceptance of a research proposal to completion of the study andsubsequent publication of its findings in the public domain. IELTS-funded researchers submit their finalproject report to the grant-awarding body who then sends it out for peer review by one or more externalspecialists in the field; it is also forwarded to the IELTS research team at Cambridge ESOL for reviewand comment. Following a comprehensive cycle of review, feedback and revision, outcomes from thefunded studies are finally released into the public domain via a number of channels, including the IELTSwebsite and publications such as this one.Volume 11 contains studies on varying themes that continue to attract attention and provoke debateamong the language testing community and beyond. Three of the six studies in this volume addressthemes of washback and impact which were also the focus of IELTS Research Reports Volume 10(2009), and of the earlier Volume 8 (2008), but the work presented here breaks some new ground in thearea of IELTS washback and impact. One study extends earlier research conducted among professionalassociations and registration entities using IELTS, while the other two studies explore the use and role ofIELTS in contexts that have so far received relatively little research attention, namely teacher educationand other postgraduate entry university courses.Interest in exploring issues of test washback and impact has grown considerably over the past 15 yearsas awareness has developed of the impact that tests and test results have at a ‘macro’ as well as a ‘micro’level; testing and assessment influence not only the career and life chances of individuals but also socialpolicy and practice in areas such as language and educational planning, migration and citizenship, as wellas professional life and employment in an increasingly globalised world. Today many language testerslocate concepts of washback and impact within the theoretical notion of ‘consequential validity’ in whichthe social consequences of testing are part of a broader, unified concept of test validity. Consequentialvalidity continues to be a core topic for theoretical debate and empirical research within the languagetesting and assessment community alongside related themes of fairness and ethics.IELTS Research Reports Volume 117