Volume 2, 1999, Paper 1
Paper 1: An investigation of speaking test reliability
Brent Merrylees
The research project was designed to complement research being
carried out at the time by the University of Cambridge Local
Examinations Syndicate (UCLES) into candidate and examiner
discourse produced in the Speaking Module of the test. The
researchers felt that analysis of this kind was fundamental to
having informed discussions on any possible changes to the test
format and the debate would be further enhanced by consulting IELTS
examiners, the practitioners who are actually required to apply the
Speaking test instrument. At the time there had been no large
scale survey of IELTS examiners to establish their attitudes to
either the speaking test format or to the band descriptors in their
current form.
The research project investigated examiner attitude to the
Speaking test by carrying out a survey of IELTS examiners working
at test centres in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Thailand,
Indonesia, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Taiwan. The survey
was delivered in a two page questionnaire and was divided
into the three broad sections of IELTS interview format, IELTS Band
Descriptors and the different interview phases. The final
sample size for the survey was 151 respondents. In addition
to this survey, a dataset of 20 IELTS interview transcriptions was
constructed and an analysis was carried out on examiner discourse
and how it can affect the language produced by the candidiate both
in terms of quantity as well as quality. The dataset was also
designed to provide a resource for more detailed analysis of the
Speaking test if it were required in the future.
