EXAM PREPARATION
IELTS, grammar and
linguistic competence
Sam McCarter
n the early dawn of Greek drama, the
I plays of Aeschylus ‘showed’ for the
first time interaction between characters
exhibiting all the elements of dramatic
conflict in human relationships, not just
an exchange of information between
an actor and a chorus. This was a
cataclysmic shift from the more mono-
dimensional ‘story-telling’ of the Iliad
and the Odyssey, the great poems of
Homer. The importance of this dramatic
change could usefully be borne in mind
still as we consider a move from an EFL/
ESOL language class where students
may be describing situations and
events in their personal lives to a class
preparing students for the IELTS exam,
with the focus on abstraction and testing
competence, ie. use of the essential
elements of language to express and
juggle and evaluate abstract concepts
rather than testing language knowledge.
If the IELTS is testing linguistic
competence rather than knowledge
of grammar, it begs the question
whether there is any point in teaching
it. The washback from the IELTS exam,
including the pressure from students
to use ‘only exam related material’ and
the time constraints faced by teachers –
often on intensive courses, some lasting
no more than a week – also beg the
question as to whether teachers have
time to deal with grammar tasks in the
IELTS class, and whether students have
time to learn any more grammar.
And, as IELTS is an assessment of level,
is it the function of the IELTS teacher to
teach students grammar or should they
be focusing on something else? If we
look at an IELTS class where the students
are around score bands 6/6.5 on a one-
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week or one-month intensive, from a top-
down perspective, teaching could more
usefully involve showing students how
much they don’t know about what they
know, that is, they can be shown how to
use the language knowledge they possess
to develop their competence.
Some IELTS students may know
the complete cannon of English
grammar and know the verb system
to an advanced level. They may not,
however, know how to use the language
efficiently to be able to navigate ‘texts’
competently enough to deal with any
part of the IELTS exam.
Some essential areas of
language in the academic
version of IELTS
A change in approach as to how language
knowledge is packaged for efficient use is
essential. De Chazal (2014: 64-65) provides
a useful taxonomy of essential elements
for academic texts which are relevant to
IELTS students and teachers, inter alia:
cause/effect relationships, classification,
comparison and contrast, connection of
phenomena and ideas, evaluation and
exemplification and a comprehensive
table of the language of cause and effect
(De Chazal: 109-111). If we take cause and
effect as an example, students may have
to deal with these essential elements in all
four skills, recognising or noticing them
(automatically) in questions in True/False/
Not Given or Yes/No/Not Given questions
examining the relationships between
ideas and concepts in a reading passage.
If students look merely at the words rather
than the relationship between the ideas,
they may misinterpret the questions and
the text or confuse a link or association
www.modernenglishteacher.com
with a cause and effect relationship.
For example, when evaluating ideas
and concepts, in any profession such as
medicine, [ ] ... is linked to ... [ ] must
not be misinterpreted as [ ]... is caused
by ...[ ]; and, hence, the same applies
in testing use and awareness of such
elements in academic discourse in IELTS.
The very same elements are essential for
competence in the other three skills, a fact
that often seems to escape students. The
elements are not just specific to any one
of the four main skills of listening, reading,
writing and speaking; students need to be
competent at navigating these elements
efficiently, actively and passively across
all four of them. This transfer can be
highlighted constantly by the teacher.
When it comes to other essential
elements, the same applies.
Classification in reading can be used
to focus students’ attention on using
classification of their own ideas in
writing responses to Writing Task 2. A
top-down approach allows teachers
and students effectively to carve up
the grammar into ‘functional chunks’,
discarding those areas that may have
less importance in academic discourse
generally such as: omit phrasal verbs
(eg. put up with) and focus instead on
prepositional verbs (eg. look into / talk
about / use in), prepositions with nouns
(decrease in / impact on), adjectives
(beneficial to / good at). There may
be greater focus, for example, on the
multiple meaning of the Present Simple
in an IELTS class from a functional
point of view, distinguishing between
facts (Water boils at 100 degrees
centigrade) and general truths (Cities
generally attract a lot of people from the
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EXAM PREPARATION
countryside) rather than just simplifying
it to fit an EFL/ESOL construct.
How the teacher and the
student need to adapt their
perception of language and
their respective teaching
and learning methods
In the approach described previously,
the teacher and the student need to
operate differently from the methods
they may be used to in a general
EFL/ ESOL class. There is, however,
little teacher training in methodology
re IELTS available except for that
in teachers’ books that accompany
IELTS course books. Yet in institutions
worldwide, teachers can often be
thrown in at the deep-end and asked
to teach an IELTS class at low or
advanced level without any training
whatsoever. It is, perhaps, not possible
to put a precise time scale on how long
it takes to become a competent IELTS
teacher, but, perhaps, a year or more is
necessary for students to feel confidence
in a teacher preparing a class for IELTS.
IELTS is a high stakes exam and
students invest a lot of time and
money not just in preparing for the
exam, but preparing for the academic
process that IELTS gives them access
to, whether that be a university course
or other professional process, such as
requalification in the medical field.
Achieving the necessary entry score for
students is just the beginning.
After this beginning, students still have
a steep hill to climb when they begin
a university undergraduate course
where they may have to write essays
of 2,000 words, or perhaps longer.
This begs another question. At what
level should students be accepted
on to an undergraduate course at a
university? This is a tricky question for
IELTS stakeholders such as universities
and university departments. Students
at IELTS level 7 should be able to
write logically, using a range of
cohesive devices and showing clear
progression. Each of their paragraphs
should have a central topic and
be frequently error-free. Their lexis
should be wide-ranging and show
awareness of style and collocation. I
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am paraphrasing but this is clearly a
tall order for many students.
Some methodology
With the number of candidates currently
over two million per year, a ‘taxonomy of
methodology’ for IELTS is now needed.
IELTS is an international examination,
which is still growing after some 25 years.
The future lies in greater connection
and interaction between IELTS
practitioners via electronic media using
online courses, conferences involving
Skype, and Skype/video-conferencing
presentations and workshops as follow
up to conferences to collect and
disseminate examples of good practice.
In the meantime, however, some tasks
that teachers can use to engage their
students more in developing their
awareness of a top-down approach
to IELTS involve simple questioning,
using some basic Socratic reasoning, to
examine and connect phenomena in all
four skills (Are these ideas connected
in any way? How? What makes you
think so?), to make evaluations (Is this
important/useful, harmful/effective? Why?
How? From what perspective? What about
the cultural perspective?) Making students
aware of the relationships between
essential elements and areas such as
nominalisation across the four main skills,
and then eliciting the links or associations
between ideas and the links between the
various skills can be done regularly to
help develop student language awareness.
All this can be done as part of the
examination of a reading passage and
the questions. Additionally, reading
passages can be used to inform the
writing and speaking components, as
can the listening component.
Questioning
Encouraging students to question
everything that they see is useful in the
IELTS classroom, even in short courses, to
help them develop independence in their
studies. For example, asking students to
look at a reading passage without exam-
type questions and to analyse it from
different perspectives such as culture and
education, social, financial; and also from
the point of view of the purpose of the
text, or the organisation at paragraph level
and then sentence level.
www.modernenglishteacher.com
Students could be given a text on a
subject such as classifying birds to read to
examine for homework, thinking about
and/or writing some questions using basic
Socratic reasoning as above. They could
then discuss the text briefly in the lesson
before presenting some of their questions
to analyse the text. From the questioning
perspective, students could also be given
a task about the organisation of the
paragraphs and then the organisation
between the sentences in paragraphs
and the development of ideas from the
point of view of cohesion and coherence.
They could then be given exam-type
questions about the text or given a similar
text on the same subject with questions.
Alternatively, they can write their own
comprehension questions about a text.
This same process using questions can
be used by students to examine and
redraft their own essays at home and in
class, which is a simple starting point of
examining a text without the influence
of the exam.
To students over-focused on a bottom-
up approach to language, shining the
light on the ‘dark matter’ that carves up
the grammar into essential chunks and,
hence, binds and links concepts together
can lead to increased competence in the
academic version of IELTS. So grammar
teaching itself may not be applicable,
but teaching involving grammar within
essential elements is necessary.
References
De Chazal E (2014) English for Academic
Purposes. Oxford Handbooks for Language
Teachers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sam McCarter’s teaching career spans
a period of more than 30 years with
publications for IELTS, EAP and ESP, such
as the widely used IELTS publication
Ready for IELTS (Macmillan), Oxford EAP
B2 course book (OUP), and Medicine
1 and Medicine 2 (OUP). His interests
include materials production, including
the use of electronic media, and
teaching methodology.
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