Beyond the IELTS test: Chinese and Japanese postgraduate UK experiences

ABSTRACT

This case study explores the challenges that Master’s students encounter when learning to write in academic English as part of a UK postgraduate course, after having achieved the required IELTS entry score. Interviews with six Chinese and Japanese learners at different stages of the Master’s study revealed more sophisticated writing difficulties than they had previously experienced. Although students were largely managing their written work overall, there were recurring challenges with critical thinking, the transition to full academic compositions, using reading to inform academic writing, presenting evidence and conveying a clear written message over demonstrating lexical or grammatical range as required in IELTS writing. Furthermore, candidates on non-standard courses (e.g. film or finance) found their assignments to be quite unfamiliar; the use of one academic test for all disciplines may be disadvantageous to some. In summary, although IELTS had provided an important first step to help students develop basic writing skills, meeting university assessment expectations necessitated considerable further progress. The required support to achieve this may be somewhat underdeveloped in the existing model of international postgraduate study, for the participants in this paper. This research follows as part of a larger project, which focussed on IELTS test preparation in China and Japan (Clark 2018).

KEYWORDS:

• IELTS
• postgraduate study
• masters
• academic writing
• Chinese students
• Japanese students

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tony Clark

Tony Clark is a Senior Research Manager at Cambridge Assessment English, managing research on the IELTS test. Since joining Cambridge English in 2018, he has been responsible for the IELTS Joint-funded Research Programme and the Caroline Clapham Master's Award, acted as Permanent Secretary/Chair of the IELTS Joint Research Committee, and led on a number of high profile cross-partner research projects, in addition to several standard setting workshops. His other principal research interests include Chinese and Japanese educational contexts, academic writing for overseas learning, test preparation, pedagogy, diagnostic assessment and lexical studies. Tony's PhD (University of Bristol) received a British Council Research Assessment Award in 2014, and in 2015/2016 he was a recipient of the Newton Fund Scholarship.

Guoxing Yu

Guoxing Yu is Professor of Language Assessment at University of Bristol. His research has appeared in top journals including Applied Linguistics, Assessing Writing, Assessment in Education, Language Assessment Quarterly, Language Testing, and Reading & Writing.