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British Council writing for a purpose website- essay structure

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British Council writing for a purpose website- essay structure

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I’ve included a link to the British Council writing for a purpose website, particularly focusing on essay structure. The website is based on analysis from the British Academic Written English Corpus, which classified university writing into different genre classifications, such as ‘essays’ or ‘case studies’. The genres themselves are then further sub-divided into rhetorical functions. As previously mentioned with the materials about marriage in the padlet above, I use a genre approach when teaching students’ academic writing. The main genre rhetorical styles that the marriage lesson focus on are listed in the first three columns; namely, exposition, discussion and challenge. Of the other functions, factorial and consequential are less useful/rarely used in IELTS, while the final style is that of comment which wouldn’t be used in IELTS.

I was rather intrigued by the last style that of ‘comment’ and it kind of reminds me of an idea suggested by Moore & Morton (2005). They suggested to make the IELTS writing Task 2 more authentic, there should be a link to the reading test. This would mean that the students wouldn’t only use their own prior knowledge but would also have to refer to source material and comment on it. They suggested that this link could either be compulsory or optional in whether students had to use relevant material from the reading passage in their essays, but would help to enhance the test’s authenticity and wouldn’t be a considerable logistical change to the test.

Personally, I think this would be excellent idea and generally when teaching IELTS preparation, I always introduce the topic of the writing with either a speaking or reading exercise first to provide relevant subject material. Unfortunately, it should be noted that the research is now over 10 years old and IELTS obviously haven’t heeded such an obvious suggestion. Although, overall, I think the IELTS is a very strong test and I am quite impressed with its research base- the availability of the IELTS research reports on their website, for example, I am a bit frustrated that many of the recommendations the researchers make are seldom implemented in the test structure.

Moore, T & Morton, J. 2005 ‘Dimensions of Difference: a comparison of university writing and IELTS writing’, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 4, pp. 43-66.

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Discipline specificity in the IELTS Academic Module

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Discipline specificity in the IELTS Academic Module

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The IELTS tests is one of the most widely used international tests of English. The test is offered in two modules ‘general training’, mainly for immigration purposes, and ‘academic’ for non-native English speaker students wishing to undertake academic study. However, originally the test was offered in separate discipline streams: business studies and social science, life and medical sciences as well as physical science and technology. Below I have attached research by Clapham (2001) which provides the main justification used by IELTS for their disbanding of the separate discipline streams, whereby they combined them into one academic module.

The main point made by Clapham (2001) is that we cannot actually place students into fully discrete discipline streams. So while, of course, students from a science background will read scientific texts, this does not mean they read those texts exclusively. Due to the nature of our society, people are expected to read novels, newspapers etc. and comment on social and economic events regardless of their discipline, so some 87% of science students also read some business and social science material. Even though it is recognized that many non-scientists show little interest in science, almost two-thirds of the business and social science group said they, indeed, read some science materials. This trend is further exacerbated by the increase of multi-disciplinary programmes in universities. Thus, students are naturally familiar with text topics and types which may on the surface be outside of their particular subject specialism. In addition, the differences within the subject streams may be just as large as the differences between them; for example, many physical science students found an engineering text on shipwrecks particularly challenging, even though that was considered to be part of the physical science and technology stream. Thus Clapham (2001) concludes that the assumed advantages of having separate discipline streams weren’t borne out by the data.

Nevertheless, Hyatt & Brookes (2009) investigated stakeholder perceptions of the IELTS test and found that many academics would prefer to see the option of having separate discipline-streamed test tasks. Hyatt & Brookes (2009:38) argued that ‘such specialisation would have the advantage of indicating a candidate’s competence in the specific register of study and might have a spin-off marketing advantage for IELTS with departments opting for such specialised testing over other more general language proficiency testing’ and recommended that IELTS undertake a feasibility study of the validity and impact of re-introducing such specific testing.

From my own experience, this is an issue which constantly arises with students and I think is an example of negative washback (Green 2007), as in the test should reflect the target language needs of the learner. While I frequently teach business and economics students for whom both tasks of the writing test are mostly valid, we do teach a large number of law students who particularly resent having to do the data analysis of Writing Task 1. Even with business and economics students, several complain about having to write essays on unrelated subjects such as agriculture, and even within Task 1, while graphs and charts may be relevant, processes and maps are less relevant to business students. While such a reorganization of the IELTS may be a tremendous logistical challenge, I think that, particularly for postgraduate level, specialized testing should be offered as an option to students.

Clapham, C. (2001) Discipline specificity and EAP. In: Peacock, M. and Flowerdew, J. (eds.) Research Perspectives on English for Academic Purposes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 84-100.

Green, A. (2007) IELTS Washback in context: preparation for academic writing in higher education, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hyatt, D. & Brooks, G. (2009). ‘Investigating stakeholders’ perceptions of IELTS as an entry requirement for higher education in the UK’. IELTS Research Reports, Vol. 10, Report 1. IELTS Australia Pty Ltd, Canberra.

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A critical reflection of materials used to develop students' critical literacy skills on a pre-sessional EAP course

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A critical reflection of materials used to develop students' critical literacy skills on a pre-sessional EAP course

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Below is an assignment I completed as part of my MA TESOL programme with the Institute of Education, University of London. I have included this assignment as an example of materials I use with EAP classes as opposed to strictly IELTS preparation classes. I think it also provides an example of themes I mentioned above in relation to the EAP syllabus about how EAP and IELTS can be combined, with IELTS presenting an introductory context and this being refined by EAP. I chose to focus specifically on the issue of critical literacy because this was an area which many studies found that international students struggled with (for example, Campbell & Li (2008), Phakiti & Li (2011) and Turner (2006)). I also chose this area because as Deakin (1998) notes, it is a particularly important aspect of university study, but is simplified and only partially covered by the IELTS.

For the assignment I designed five lessons using a range of texts including blogs, newspapers and academic articles and got the students to interact with the texts in various ways as outlined by Behrman (2006). For example, in the first lesson the students start by reading a biographical text taken from an IELTS reading test. The passage is actually an adapted version of the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on Marie Curie. Encyclopedias are traditionally viewed as neutral, objective reference materials, but, in fact, have historically suffered from significant racial and gender biases. The students then read a previous Encyclopedia Britannica entry on Marie Curie which relegated her to an addendum to her husband’s entry, despite being one of the most famous scientists of the twentieth century. Other issues introduced in the materials are the use of online encyclopedias, media bias, racial bias in storybooks and advertising as well as topic appropriacy in language course books and IELTS writing topics.
Behrman, E. (2006). ‘Teaching about language, power, and text: A review of classroom practices that support critical literacy’ in Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Vol. 49, No.6 pp.490-498.
Deakin, G. (1998). ‘IELTS in context: Issues in EAP for overseas students’ in EA Journal, Vol. 15, No.2, pp. 7-28.

Campbell, J. & Li, M. (2008). ‘Experiences at a New Zealand University Asian Students' Voices: An Empirical Study of Asian Students' Learning’ in the Journal of Studies in International Education, Vol.12, No.4, pp. 375.
Phakiti, A & Li, L. (2011). ‘General Academic Difficulties and Reading and Writing Difficulties among Asian ESL Postgraduate Students in TESOL at an Australian University’ in the RELC Journal, Vol.42, No.3, pp. 227–264.
Turner, Y. (2006) ‘Chinese Students in a UK Business School: Hearing the Student Voice in Reflective Teaching and Learning Practice’ in Higher Education Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 1, pp. 27–51.

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Below is one of the lessons I use to introduce students to the different genres of academic writing. The writing is based around an IELTS Writing Task 2 question, but I also use it as an introduction to academic writing as it provides the structures that they can use. As Hyland (2007) argues it is common when teaching genre to organize materials around a central theme; in this case, the theme is that of the age of marriage and in each lesson they focus on the different agree or disagree sides to the question. Hyland (2007) argues that genres tend to be contextualized as broad rhetorical patterns; these materials look at three rhetorical patterns, namely the one-sided exposition, a two-sided alternating or challenge structure and a 2-sided discussion structure. Hyland (2007) suggests sequencing genres in their perceived level of difficulty so I started with the exposition before moving onto the more complicated alternating structure and finishing with the discussion structure as it provides a summary of both sides.

Hyland (2007) argues that the advantage of using a genre approach is that it provides students with an explicit understanding of how texts are structured and the reasons why they are written in that way. This provides the teacher with an opportunity to carefully scaffold the learning, which is both supportive and empowering to students. As can be seen in the materials each part of the essay is carefully scaffolded with students given a clear structure to practice and sample answers to review. Hyland (2007) argues that once the overall text structure has been understood, then the students can be introduced to how the language can be used and coded in distinct ways. In the materials the two main language foci are the way the passive is used to introduce counter-arguments and how connectives are used to link ideas. As Hyland (2007) argues, the language points are not introduced as discrete components, but are instead used to create meanings and to understand their role in the text.
The main disadvantage of genre approaches is it can restrict the freedom of students compared to traditional process writing (Hyland 2007). For example, the materials are quite heavily scaffolded, so the students have little choice in terms of ideas. However, I would argue that this is appropriate at this stage because these materials would be used as an introduction to writing and so at that stage, the heavy scaffolding provides reassurance to the students. Later in the course, once students have practiced using the different genres, I reduce the amount of scaffolding and allow them to practice writing fluently with their own ideas.
Hyland, K. (2007) ‘Genre pedagogy: Language, literacy and L2 writing instruction’ Journal of Second Language Writing Vol.16, pp.148–164.

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Below is the syllabus document for the 4.5 month EAP course I taught in 2015. Obviously, there many considerations to make when designing a syllabus, but I shall just go into detail about the issue of IELTS and academic writing. First, as can be seen, the syllabus programme is split into an EAP stream and IELTS and Language stream. The main justification for this split is research done by Moore & Morton (2005), which looked at a sample of writing Task 2 papers from the IELTS Academic module and compared them to a corpus of university assignments. Whereas the university assignments required a range of external sources, used a variety of rhetorical styles and were a mix of phenomenal and meta-phenomenal tasks, the IELTS tasks relied on prior knowledge, had a disproportionately high number of hortatory rhetorical functions and were all of a phenomenal nature. These substantial differences led them to conclude that there should be a degree of separation between IELTS writing, which was more similar in style to that of a newspaper editorial, and academic writing in the form of essays.
Nevertheless, as Green (2007:13) argues the IELTS test is supposed to promote positive washback, as the task types are ‘intended to reflect the target needs of undergraduate and postgraduate students’. Thus, the direct, constructed responses of the writing module are supposed to ‘foster classroom activities more conducive to learning’ and to ‘reflect the conditions and operations that apply in the target language use domain’. Therefore, overall, there is still no clear answer as to what extent IELTS writing and academic writing should be separated and this proved quite a point of contention as in IALF Bali each stream had separate teachers, whereas in IALF Jakarta one teacher taught both streams for one class. Personally, I would argue that while IELTS provides a useful introduction to academic writing, particularly in terms of organizing your ideas into a coherent essay structure, EAP goes further in analyzing text structures and has elements, such as paraphrasing and referencing, which aren’t present in the IELTS. Therefore, often the two complement each other and can be taught together, while at other times the focus does need to be on one and not the other.

Green, A. (2007) IELTS Washback in context: preparation for academic writing in higher education, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Moore, T & Morton, J. 2005 ‘Dimensions of Difference: a comparison of university writing and IELTS writing’, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 4, pp. 43-66.

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I am currently teaching at the Indonesia Australia Language Foundation (IALF) in Jakarta, Indonesia and below is the capability statement of the institution. The institution was actually set up as a foundation based on a memorandum of understanding between the governments of Indonesia and Australia. Therefore, rather than being strictly commercial, the organization is committed to the sustainable development of Indonesia through the promotion of English language training. This is reflected in the slogan of ‘education for development’ as well as the mission statement on page 2 of the capability statement. Hyland & Hamp-Lyons (2002:2) make the point that EAP provision is not solely so students can master enough English to succeed in their subject, but is also important in the economic development of a country so that it is able to produce ‘an annual crop of graduates who can function in employment’. Flowerdew & Peacock (2001) go into more detail about the motivations of non-native speakers of English, including how English is a central language of economics and commerce as well as of research and so is important in transferring knowledge and expertise to developing countries.

As can be seen in the capability statement, the centre in Jakarta offers courses for both IELTS preparation and EAP as part of the Australian Awards Scholarship scheme, AUSaid, The Australian Government. These awards are mainly given to Government workers or civil servants as well as some NGO’s and civil society organization in order to help promote sustainable development and governance in key sectors. The centre in Bali also offers a range of other courses such as general English, children’s and teacher training courses, while the organization also works on various development schemes throughout Indonesia and its surrounding neighbours such as Kiribati and East Timor.

Flowerdew, J. and Peacock, M. (2001) ‘Issues in EAP: A preliminary perspective’, pp8-24 in Research Perspectives on English for Academic Purposes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hyland, K. and Hamp-Lyons, L. (2002) ‘EAP: issues and directions’ Journal of English for Academic Purposes Vol.1, pp.1-12.

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Online brochure outlining the services and activities offered by the Indonesia Australia Language Foundation