IELTS Research Reports

Wayne Sawyer and Michael SinghElder has also investigated the predictive validity of IELTS with specific respect to teacher educationstudents at a range of tertiary institutions in Melbourne. Specifically (Elder 1993b) she has asked:1 Is performance on the IELTS test a reliable predictor of success in postgraduate Diplomaof Education courses? Elder found that IELTS can be regarded as a reasonably goodindicator of short term performance in teacher education courses, though in the long term,‘the predictive power of IELTS diminishes’ because of improvements in English languageability and the nature of the language variables likely to affect teaching performance(Elder, 1993b, pp 78-80).2 How does IELTS compare with each institution’s screening procedures as far as theaccuracy of its predictions is concerned? Elder found that no substantial claims could bemade either for or against IELTS when compared with other locally-applied procedures(Elder, 1993b, p 82).3 What is the optimum IELTS threshold for entry to teacher education? To this, Elderanswered that above global bands 4.5 and listening band 5.5, too many other factors (e.g.subject knowledge, cultural adaptability, understanding of classroom role relationships)were likely to interact with language ability in determining progress and should be takeninto account in making initial student selection.4 Do scores on the reading, writing, listening and speaking components of the IELTS testpredict the degree of difficulty experienced by candidates in performing courseworktasks? No significant correlations were found, but the patterns in the data did show thatthe scores may have some value as a means of diagnosing the difficulties that candidatesmay experience with the language demands of their study (Elder, 1993b, p 86).5 Does second language instruction/exposure during the training year affect the relationshipbetween predictions and outcomes? The poor return rate of questionnaires made itimpossible to calculate the impact of this variable on the strength of IELTS predictions(Elder, 1993b, p 87).The data confirmed evidence from previous studies that it is at low levels of proficiency that languagemakes a difference (Elder 1993b, p 72). Patterns in the data did show that the IELTS scores havesome value as a means of diagnosing the difficulties that candidates are likely to experience due tothe language demands of their teacher education studies- thus, the lower their writing score, the morelikely it is that the candidates will perceive essay writing as problematic; listening ability predictsdifficulties with lecture and tutorial comprehension better than do scores for other test components,and the reading test score is the best predictor of difficulties reported in reading academic texts. Thisstudy indicated that English language support may continue to be necessary even at the higher levelsof language proficiency. Elder (1993b, p 88) recommended that entry level thresholds regardingEnglish language proficiency should be set by universities in accordance with their capacity to providesuch support. (More recently, O’Loughlin and Arkoudis [2009] found that the degree of Englishlanguage support students sought within the university and the degree of contact with English they hadoutside the university strongly influenced their language improvement).Viete (1998) pioneered a culturally sensitive assessment procedure, the Diploma of Education OralTest of English (DEOTE) for gauging the oral communicative competence in English of internationalstudent-teachers. This test was developed because ‘none of the large-scale testing systems (TOEFL/TSE/TWE, IELTS) or rating scales (ASLPRs) adequately reflected the demands of teacher trainingon communication skills in English’(Viete, 1998, p 173; Viete’s reference is to the former Australian90 www.ielts.org