An investigation of the process of writing IELTS Academic Reading ...

Anthony Green and Roger Hawkey
(see above). In the second session the item writers worked as a group to further refine their texts and
items to make them more suitable for the test (as the trained item writers would normally do in an
actual test editing meeting). In Salisbury’s terms, this session may be said to have been concerned
retrospectively with the concerted phase and prospectively and concurrently with the refining phase.
In preparation for Phase 2, each participating item writer was sent a commissioning letter (Appendix
A), based on a model provided by Cambridge ESOL, inviting them to choose a text that would be
suitable for use in IELTS, to edit this text as appropriate and to write 16 or 17 test questions to
accompany the text.
In the first session of Phase 2, we sought insights into the strategies that item writers use in selecting
and preparing texts and the role that the test specifications, experience and other sources of knowledge
might play in this process for experienced and inexperienced writers. Writers were interviewed about
their selection of texts for item writing purposes. Key questions for this session included how item
writers select texts, how they adapt the texts to shape them for the purposes of the test and how they
generate items. The focus was on the specific text selected by the item writer for this exercise, the
features that made it attractive for the purpose of writing IELTS items and the edits that might have
been required to shape the text to meet the requirements of the test.
The second session of Phase 2 was similar to an IELTS editing meeting (see above). Item writers
brought their texts and items to the focus group to discuss whether these did, as intended, meet the
requirements of the test. Again, observation of differences between the experienced and inexperienced
writers was intended to provide insights into the practices of those item writers working within the
IELTS system for test production. Here the researchers sought to understand the kinds of issues that
item writers attend to in texts prepared by others, the changes that they suggest and features of texts
and test questions that are given approval or attract criticism. Once again, the analyses of the
deliberations linked themes and categories emerging from the recordings and transcripts to the insights
provided by the socio-cognitive framework Weir 2005, Khalifa and Weir 2009, Weir et al 2009a). It
was expected that differences between the experienced and non-experienced groups would highlight
the practices of item writers working within the IELTS system for test production and the nature of
their expertise. As will be seen below, the study provides insights into how item writers prepare texts
and items, and their focus of attention in texts prepared by others; also into the features of texts and
test questions that attract approval or criticism in editing.
4 ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS FROM INTERVIEWS AND FOCUS GROUP
DISCUSSIONS
4.1 Non-experienced IELTS item writer group
Session 1: participant discussion of their experience with their commission to select an
appropriate IELTS academic reading text, edit and adapt for testing purposes and generate test
items
This first information collection exercise was organised as a researcher-led discussion session. Here
participants discussed their experience with their commission to select an appropriate IELTS academic
reading text, edit and adapt it for testing purposes and generate test items. Each of the participants in
turn (see Table 10 in Appendix B for cv and other information on them) was first invited to describe
the processes through which an ‘IELTS’ text was selected and adapted, then reading test items created.
The intended ethos was participant-centred and informal, with discussion welcomed of each
participant’s initial account of the experience concerned. Both researchers were present but played a
low-key role, intervening infrequently and informally. All proceedings were recorded (see above).
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