Page 20 - ELG1705 May Issue 447

DATA & ANALYSIS

Not-so-easy

listening?

Why is there so much variation in the
performance of East Asian countries in
the skills tested by Ielts? And do the
Chinese need to give up their attachment
to traditional teaching in L1 in order to
excel? Melanie Butler investigates

ocelyn Wang, head of teacher to get them to work in pairs or groups, or to and because it publishes results for the top
development at China’s largest practise speaking and writing. This reflected forty countries and languages, ensuring large
language school chain, New the Chinese tradition of education, shared samples.
Oriental, recently gave a heartfelt with much of East Asia, which has made them It has a fairly homogenous demographic:
Jdefence of the Chinese system of dominant in maths and science. academically able 17–25 year olds preparing to
English language training. At this year’s Iatefl So why should the Chinese be forced to study for university, normally abroad, and thus
conference, she showed video clips of expert adopt British-style communicative language likely to be from the highest socio-economic
Chinese teachers delivering lectures mostly techniques? What was wrong with the old groups.
in Mandarin while the students sat in rapt Chinese way? Nearly all candidates enrol in test
attention, occasionally taking notes. One way of measuring the effectiveness of preparation programmes. Looking at the
This, Wang pointed out in faultless English, a methodology, or indeed of a whole learning skills profiles for Academic Ielts should show
was how she had learned the language, and it culture, is by measuring international test whether traditional Chinese methodology
remained the preferred method for high school scores and comparing the results of students of results in lower oral and aural skills, those
students and those preparing to study abroad. other nationalities. most commonly focused on in British-style
The communicative language teaching To see what, if any, effect traditional Chinese communicative language teaching.
approach, in which teachers had been trained and East Asian methods of teaching had on Remember though that in Ielts Academic
at the New Oriental Celta Centre, worked outcomes, we analysed the results of the most every single nationality scores lower in writing
reasonably well with younger learners, she recent (2015) Ielts Academic English test. than in any other skill – which is not the case
said. But older students and their parents We chose Academic Ielts because it is the for General Ielts.
complained when Celta-trained teachers tried most widely taken of academic English exams Of course, the differences of scores on a test
do not only reflect the differences in learning
culture and teaching methodology.
A 2006 Chinese research paper - Kim, M-H
& Lee, H-H (2006) Determinants of Toefl scores:
a comparison of linguistic and economic factors -
showed that for both the paper- and computer-
based Toefl tests outcomes were correlated
primarily with the degree of language
difference between the L1 and L2. The US-
administered Toefl exams, which are focused
on academic English, did not test speaking but
did test language knowledge.
Therefore speakers of Indo-European
languages outperform speakers of non-Indo-
European languages, with Germanic language
Mainland (total score: 5.7)
Singapore (General IELTS, total score : 7.4) speakers outperforming speakers of Slavic or
Hong Kong (total score: 6.5) Romance languages.
Taiwan (total score: 6.2) The second predictor for test success was the
amount of English in the environment – the
number of native speakers, its use as a second
language and the use of English in the media.
To examine the impact of language distance,
Table 1: IELTS Skills profile Chinese - speaking East Asia we started by comparing the 2015 Ielts skills

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