Presented By Olwyn Alexander

Session Details

The first writing task in the IELTS examination is usually a data description. Test takers are presented with a diagram or bar chart and asked to ‘Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. 1 This is in many respects a problematic task. The data tend to be typical of business contexts, thus under-representing the kind of data commentary expected in economics, science and engineering degrees. If preparation courses for IELTS place too much emphasis on the format of this task, they risk under-preparing some students for the writing demands of their university courses. In addition, many EFL teachers who prepare students for IELTS have a background in language, literature or humanities subjects and are not familiar with the purpose of data commentary in economics, science or engineering. Some teachers report that they find the data question difficult to teach effectively.

In this talk I will present the results of a study investigating the practices of data commentary in a higher education institution and show how these differ from the IELTS writing task 1 as presented in coursebooks and exam practice materials. I will demonstrate the kinds of tasks that might usefully prepare students to write data commentary both for IELTS and for their subsequent engineering and science degrees and show how these might be presented in class.

1 Sample writing task 1, retrieved 20.09.08 from http://www.ielts.org/candidates/find_out_more/free_samples/academic_writing_sample.aspx

View The Session

Support Material