Abstract
The International English Language Teaching System (IELTS) examination in Academic English includes two writing tasks: summarizing information from a graph or chart, and writing a short essay to support a position on an issue of opinion. The aim of this small-scale exploratory survey was to find out from teachers and students their attitudes towards the usefulness of, and preparation for, the two IELTS writing tasks. ‘Usefulness’ and ‘impact/washback’ are components of test validity, thus eliciting responses (via questionnaires) from 2 major stakeholders (teachers n=17, students n=36) in this high-stakes benchmark exam would provide information about perceptions of validity. The results indicate that both IELTS task one and task two are perceived by teachers and students as having a positive effect on class-based writing skills and bearing a reasonable relationship with skills needed at faculty level. Lack of usefulness was reported mainly by students in the Sharia and Law and Business faculties.
Citation
Lewthwaite, M.D. (2007), "Teacher and Student Attitudes to IELTS Writing Tasks: Positive or Negative Washback?", Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Gulf Perspectives, Vol. 4 No. 2, pp. 11-30. https://doi.org/10.18538/lthe.v4.n2.06
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2007 Malcolm David Lewthwaite
License
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
Acknowledgements
Publisher's note: The Publisher would like to inform the reader that the article “Teacher and Student Attitudes to IELTS Writing Tasks: Positive or Negative Washback?” has changed pagination. Previous pagination was pp. 1-20. The updated pagination for the article is now pp. 11-30. The Publisher apologises for any inconvenience caused.