What is the Difficulty level of Question Types in the IELTS Academic Reading Sub-test
Ruwen Zhang & John Hope
Abstract
A high grade IELTS (International English Language Testing System) result is one of the most acceptable forms of evidence regarding Chinese candidate’s language proficiency for entering foreign universities or colleges, so attaining the required score in each band of the IELTS is extremely important for Chinese students. The purpose of our study is to unprecedentedly identify the difficulty level of all nine question types in the IELTS reading subtest so as to help students to make improvements in their band score. Our study utilised a framework named task characteristics and via a mixed methodology, we could determine the difficulty level in the academic reading subtest of the IELTS. The findings reveal that the Chinese student test participants think the question type of Gapfilling is the easiest, while the question type of Matching--finding correct endings is the most difficult. The findings also found that the difficulty level of the question types could have an impact on Chinese students’ performance in the IELTS test. The significance of our study is that it could help Chinese IELTS reading teachers to adjust their teaching plans to better prepare their students for the IELTS reading sub-test. They could also be able to more accurately predict their students’ performance according to the combination of different question types in IELTS reading tests.