The General Module is generally taken for immigration purposes (Canada and Australia include it as one of their immigration requirements, in some circumstances) and is not accepted, usually, for entry to education.
The General module has a different reading test, with shorter, more ‘everyday’ texts, such as advertisements, magazine articles, and so on. The academic test has 3 academic style articles of about 900 words. It’s a lot more difficult that the General module.
The writing section is also different; in the General Module, the first task is to write a letter, the second a discursive essay. In the Academic Module, Task 1 is to summarise diagrammatic information and also a discursive essay which is usually slightly more complex than in the General Module.
The listening and speaking sections are the same.
You are right, CharlieJack, there’s not much significant movement in average scores from one year to the next. It’s a fairly well designed test, and that is to be expected.
Are you saying that the Taipei Times, The China News, The British Council and Cambridge University are all lying about low IELTs scores here in Taiwan in order to create anxiety amongst IELTs students/candidates and send them running back to the buxibans to sign up for more classes in case they fail?[/quote]
No, I’m saying that if you want to have an opinion you need to start thinking rather than jumping to conclusions or repeating things reported by people who have commercial agendas. After all, we’re teaching the people who are supposed to be the elite. We have a duty to be smarter than any hack at third-rate news organs.
Numbers are open to interpretation. They are usually interpreted according to whatever agenda is being promoted. Telling everyone that everything is hunky dory, in this case, would be bad for business. 30,000 people a year go to study overseas, that’s more than 10% of the number of people graduating from university. When they come back, the majority of them get crappy jobs earning a few poxy thousand more than they would have done otherwise. The ROI is laughable. It doesn’t make sense. Why does nobody ever report that studying abroad is a waste of money? Could it be that doing so would be bad for business?
I find that a lot of students have problems understanding some of the material in these tests because they don’t have the general education required to understand it in their own language. They studied other things. Consequently I need to be able to increase their knowledge of a wide range of topics. To do my job properly I need to know a bit about business, marketing, history, geography, health issues, the environment, and lots lots more. And as a large percentage of my students are hoping to study media, marketing, mass communications, PR, journalism or similar then obviously there is an onus on me to understand what press releases and conferences are all about. I think this is true for anyone else involved in this area of endeavour, so I’m surprised that you are so hostile to an informed statement such as mine. Certainly, your interpretation is inappropriate and seemed to be driven by a need to promote your own agenda rather than ascertain the facts.
Personally, I agree with Buttercup that the scores are probably a fair reflection of the average level of ability of people in Taiwan. They’re not stupid people, they’re just making a huge leap from their own language to ours. And they’re doing it with a cultural background that is pretty incompatible too. It is no small achievement to reach a 5.5, regardless of whether they (or you) consider anything less than 7.0 to be a failure. I agree that a 7.0 should be achievable for an above-average student, a description that I hope includes all doctors, but only with specialised instruction from someone with the appropriate expertise. This is not a mass-market goal, however.
And in any case, what’s the point in ranting about the awful education environment in Taiwan? If they were doing everything right then they wouldn’t need you, or me. I quite like being the guy who can say “You know how you do X in high school? Well, that means that Y… and take a look at the eventual results of that. It says here that Z is important for this particular test too. Would you like me to teach you the other stuff you need to know?” I get to be a fairly well-paid expert instead of just a purveyor of vocabulary and idioms. It’s fun. And it helps that there is a whole industry busily telling people that the Taiwanese education system is crap and that they need to hire more people like me.
Finally, and I hate to say this as it sounds like cheap point-scoring, but there is something that I’m quite passionate about. I believe, very strongly, that if you are going to teach English then you should make efforts to set a good example - at all times. It adds a lot to your credibility if, before pointing fingers at others, you yourself are doing everything right.
I teach my students that they should always proofread their written work, even if it means stopping writing. I teach them that minor spelling errors matter and should be corrected. I teach them that if they aspire to study at a master’s level then they need to start working at a higher level than the average. So I get a bit grumpy when I see teachers making avoidable errors, especially when they do so consistently. It’s sloppy. It indicates a lack of attention to detail, a lack of thoughtfulness, a lack of professionalism that undermines their credibility.
This one is highlighted in red in my browser, but everyone makes the occasional mistake. I’m sure it could be ignored under normal circumstances. Similarly, I’m not going to go on about matters of ‘style’ such as referring to “Taiwan’s grades” rather than “the grades achieved by students in Taiwan” as we then get into nit-picking and stupid technical arguments about stuff that probably doesn’t matter very much. I’m sure I use turns of phrase that other people can find fault with too.
But
Capital S, capital L. If you were my student you would get a public warning for that. It’s contemptuous of the conventions (the rules) of English writing that we’re teaching, and it’s repeated in the quote at the top of this post. I have a hard time taking anyone seriously when they bitch about other people but can’t be bothered to get the basics right themselves. Please try and set an appropriate standard of professionalism when discussing the shortcomings of others.
Thank you.
(Edit: CYOA: I proofread, fixed the obvious bloopers, and will buy a drink for the first person who spots the deliberate mistake.)
What isn’t factored into those numbers however is the total study time taken to achieve such results. I’m fairly confident I would see Taiwan way up there with its great amount of stupid homework assignments and students that go into foreign language learning at an unbelievable young age. I would actually prefer to see less emphasis on foreign language learning and more emphasis on personal development and environmental awareness. I think there is far too much of the wrong emphasis in Taiwan, in the belief that somehow only lots of money will make people happy.
You talk very idealistically about a very practical issue. I don’t know of any British universities that’d accept a 5.5 IELTs score, which means a student needs to score at least a 6 to get on a foundation course, and a 6.5 to get on a course proper. Students spend lots of money trying to acheive the highest result possible, so failing is a REAL issue for them and one that causes considerable consternation.
Again, some find logic here, and I can’t argue with ya.
Spot on.
But my doctors need a 7 and they pay a lot of money, invest a lot of time, and generally feel very anxious about failing. You can speculate all you like, but a 5.5, although no small acheivement, is not good enough.
Why shouldn’t it apply to every student? I treat every student the same, telling them all that they can do well if they study hard and give Cambridge what they want. You’ve gotta be positive and encouraging and inspiring, otherwise what’s the point?
So the issue here is whether the students’ expectations are realistic or not.
For a doctor to aim for a 7.0 doesn’t sound unreasonable. He/she should be smart enough to take what you teach him/her on board, and smart enough tom implement it. But if it has taken ten or twenty years to get to a 5.5, then is it realistic to want to achieve a 7.0 in the sort of time-scale most students seem to want? However much they may want it, however much pressure they may be under, they still have to be realistic.
I feel that if someone with crap English walks into a cram school wanting to enrol on a high-level IELTS-prep course then he should be given a serious talking to and sent to the appropriate class. What usually happens is that the commercial organisation in question takes their money, as it has to, because students don’t want to be told that their goals are unrealistic at this time.
Then they sit in the class, not understanding much of what is going on, and get a low score when they take the test four times. This brings the average down, and I don’t agree that it’s indicative of there being anything wrong with the teaching. The problem lies with the pressures on the students and the flawed understanding of what English is that they have. Generally, I find that the misunderstanding is the result of a focus on rote-learning for test-taking rather than real education, which is the fault of the people demanding test results rather than education. Every local teacher I know (and I know a lot, from Elementary School to University level) is uncomfortable with the situation, but they are in a competitive environment in which the paying customer wants tests rather than education.
Blame the parents, not the teachers or ‘the system’. Everything that is done is done to please people who don’t know shit.
Eventually, some people do recognise that they’re not doing very well. After all, they’ve repeated the same mistakes for 20 years and it doesn’t seem reasonable to expect a different result all of a sudden. Then they start listening to their teachers, and then they suddenly start doing a lot better. I’m not sure that a 7.0 is achievable for everyone, but I do agree that it’s not an unreasonable goal to have with good teaching. And good teaching is available.
The underachievers have no-one to blame except their own stupidity in doing the wrong thing, despite what their teachers would like them to do. They bring down the averages, and they blame everyone but themselves.
So, even accepting the report at face value, we’re not any closer to obtaining any benefit from this discussion. I mean, what’s the point? So the parents, schools, and teachers conspire together to guarantee failure. What does this mean to anyone here, except that it creates a market for our services?
The biggie is: how do I respond to this information in a way that is of benefit to me?
[quote=“lotusblossom”]
You talk very idealistically about a very practical issue. I don’t know of any British universities that’d accept a 5.5 IELTs score, which means a student needs to score at least a 6 to get on a foundation course, and a 6.5 to get on a course proper. Students spend lots of money trying to acheive the highest result possible, so failing is a REAL issue for them and one that causes considerable consternation.[/quote]
Simply not true. I’m not always sure of the merits of admitting 5.5s to degree courses but it does happen. I did some work for a fairly major Chinese educational placement company, and 5.5 will get a lot of students where they want to go. Not law at Oxford, but a fair amount of schools.
My ‘IELTS Foundation’ class are sending me emails to tell me about their Freshers’ Weeks, this week. Many have 5.5. Maybe you’re more likely to be accepted if you’re already living and working in the UK? Less of a ‘risk’. You’re also much more likely to get something during the clearing process if you’re here.
The OP’s article points out the low test scores of Taiwan English teachers as a contributing factor to low student scores. I recalled the article above as offering a similar opinion. On occasion I save articles that offer such insight.
Sure, but that isn’t ever going to change, significantly. Even by providing a well-qualified, highly experienced, completely bilingual teacher for every student, the ‘result’ would not be a Taiwan where evry citizen spoke great English. There are just too many factors in play, L1 interference being insurmountable beyond the intermediate level for the majority of students. That should not be seen as a failure.
By looking at the data from candidates around the world, and from my own experience, it seems clear that first language spoken is the key factor. The majority of east Asian language learners are just never going to acquire enough vocabulary to be accurate and eloquent, or to get a handle on when to use the present perfect continous over the present perfect (I say this not as a criticism; how many Europeans are really able to understand Thai consonant classes or say Cantonese tones correctly?).
What’s the solution? Not blaming schoolteachers, for sure; they had a similar education to their students.
Imagine you had to reach an upper-intermediate level of Khmer, and it was going to cost you 300-1500 an hour to do it, and you had to study after school or work, and do a difficult arbitrary test. You might do it, you might not. Could all your friends do it?