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The IELTS Tracking Study

Researchers: Joan Allwright (Principal Investigator) and Jayanti Banerjee (Researcher)

In the face of ever increasing pressure to admit L2 speakers of English wtih test scores lower than those generally recommended, Lancaster University commissioned Joan Allwright to investigate the consequences of accepting an IELTS score below the recommended one.

The study tracked the academic performance of 38 L2 speakers of English on postgraduate courses in the period October 1995 - September 1996. The study focused on 3 main issues:

1. The relationship between English language proficiency scores and academic performance for this group of students.
2. The relationship between English language proficiency scores and the 'cost' to the student and the university departments that they studied in. We defined 'cost' to the student as the need to do much more work than others, put in many more hours, make much more effort and concentrate much harder in order to satisfy the requirements of the course. We also included what we termed 'affective cost' such as undue stress and anxiety, frustration, lowered self-esteem and lowered ambitions. We defined 'cost' to academic departments as undue time and effort spent on counselling, assessment of assignments, more elaborate feedback, discussion with colleagues and examiners if the student is in danger of failing, additional work that appeals procedures create, and the possible harm to the reputation of a department if too many students under-perform or fail.
3. The feasibility of the methodology used for a larger-scale project.

The report on this project is now available as a CRILE Occasional Report:

Allwright, J. and Banerjee, J. (1997) Investigating the accuracy of admissions criteria: a case study in a British university, CRILE Occasional Report Number 7, Lancaster: Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University

The concept of 'cost' is also further developed in Jayanti Banerjee's PhD research:

Banerjee, J. (2003) Interpreting and using proficiency test scores, unpublished PhD dissertation, Lancaster University.