Introduction

This literature review is mainly about speaking test strategies and the difficulties

students face in the IELTS speaking test. This chapter focuses on several topics,

including the IELTS speaking test, speaking test-taking strategies, and the difficulties

encountered by students in part 3 of the IELTS speaking test. Only a few amounts of

research have researched the examinees' experiences in the IELTS speaking test part 3

in ESOL countries like China (Sultana, 2021). My research will supplement the

current research on IELTS speaking test-taking strategies of Chinese IELTS

candidates.

IELTS speaking test

The IELTS speaking test consists of three parts. According to Seedhouse and

Nakatsuhara （2018）, pronunciation, fluency and coherence, grammatical range and

accuracy and lexical resource are the score criteria of candidates. As According to

Karim and Haq (2014), the IELTS speaking test is a one-on-one interview between

the candidate and the examiner. You jump from one idea to different ideas The third

stage is a deeper discussion and conversation between the examiner and the candidate

about the topic in the second stage. Chinese candidates who want to further their

studies in English-speaking countries usually need an IELTS score of 6.0 or above,

and many universities require students to achieve at least 6.0 in each module （Deng,

2006）.
This section includes a lot of poorly connected ideas. I cannot see the coherence of

this paragraph at all. You can go from general (3 parts) to specific (part 3). However,

the focus is on part 3. You also need to work more on logically connecting ideas.

Speaking test-taking strategies

There are few investigations into Chinese IELTS test participants’ speaking part 3

strategies. Fernandez (2018) employed a simulated IELTS test to investigate the

strategies used by 12 ESOL students in the IELTS speaking part 3. He pointed out

that test-takers used strategies of metacognitive, cognitive, and communicative during

the test with a heavy focus on strategies of cognitive and metacognitive. They used

strategies such as connecting prior experience or knowledge, asking the examiner’s

repeat, self-correcting and so on. This piece of literature provides valuable insights

into students’ test-taking skills when performing IELTS speaking test and thus, it can

contribute to the theoretical framework of this research study. provides me with a

theoretical foundation and a writing framework. However, Fernandez (2018) only

surveyed 12 international students may not be representative of all IELTS candidates'

experiences.

On the other hand, some authors (Swain et al., 2009; Barkaoui et al., 2013))

investigated the speaking test-taking strategies of test-takers who were asked to recall

after taking the virtual TOEFL exam. Different from Fernandez (2018), they found

that students used five strategies and used more metacognitive strategies like
assessing the content of what was heard and communication strategies like connecting

to prior experiences than cognitive strategies. They also found that some test-taking

strategies have negative impacts on students. These pieces of literature provide me

with a theoretical foundation and a writing framework. However, these researches

investigated students’ strategy use in a simulated test, which may not represent the

real test where students may face other matters. My research can supply the

investigation of Chinese IELTS candidates real test-taking strategies.

Huang (2016) explored the Taiwanese learners test-taking strategies associated with

the TOEIC-S and their relationship with test performance by using quantitative data

analysis. Through analysis, he found that cognitive and communication strategies had

positive effects on students' performance, while affective strategies had no such

positive effects. The survey conducted by Huang (2006) can help me understand the

impact of different strategies on students and lay a certain theoretical foundation for

me. However, he investigates students from Taiwan, which goes beyond mainland

China.

The keywords of these pieces of literature are that cognitive, metacognitive and

communication strategies are the main strategies students use. These pieces of

literature can help to justify my research. However, there are little researches on the
strategies used by Chinese candidates in the real IELTS speaking part 3 test.

Therefore, my research can help fill in this gap.

If your section is to contribute to speaking-test-taking strategies, then you need to

name your section accordingly. At the moment, the section targets IELTS speaking

test, and this may cause confusion because readers expect to read about IELTS.

Difficulties students face with IELTS speaking test

Different social-culture background

Khan (2006) mainly used questionnaires and follow-up focus groups to investigate the

cultural bias of the IELTS speaking test among Bangladesh test-takers. The author

discovered that the speaking test’s themes, vocabulary and colloquial expressions are

more oriented to western culture, which ESOL examinees are unfamiliar with. , thus

Such differences affectingnegatively affected their performance on the speaking test.

This research can help me answer my third research question. However, this research

mainly used questionnaires so it may lose some deeper analysis of the interviewer

(Bell & Waters, 2018). In addition, the sample size is small so it may not represent all

IELTS participants.

The examiner’s unfriendly attitude

Sultana (2021) used a qualitative approach and semi-structured interviews

interviewed eight Bangladeshi IELTS examiners to discover challenges they

experience while taking the IELTS test. Sultana’s (2021) found that when candidates

feltfeel the attitude ofthat the examiners wereis unfriendly, they will would feel

nervous and confused. This paper collected data through interviews, which could

prove the validity of my choice of using interviews. However, only eight participants

were interviewed for the study, the number of samples is too small so it may lose

some validity.

Coherence problem and inappropriate word choice

Dashi and Razmjoo (2020) used a mixed-methods approach to investigate 59 Iranian

IELTS candidates’ strengths and weaknesses in the IELTS speaking test. They found

that participants face coherence problems and the most common coherence problem

was connectors and conjunctions. In addition, candidates use a large number of out-

of-context vocabulary, because they do not know enough about what each word

means in different contexts (Dashti & Razmjoo, 2020). This research can also help me

to answer my third question, however, this study researched Iranian IELTS

candidates’ difficulties, which may differ from Chinese test-takers.

The key theme of these three pieces of literature is that students face three types of

IELTS speaking test difficulties, including different social-culture backgrounds, the

examiner’s unfriendly attitude and coherence problem and inappropriate word choice.

It can help me explain the reason why the difference between the needed strategies

and the actual strategies used by students.

Current literature explores IELTS virtual Speaking test part 3 strategies for

international students, TOEFL speaking test strategy for Chinese students, and some

IELTS speaking test difficulties. However, there is currently a lack of research on the

test-taking strategies used by Chinese candidates in real IELTS speaking part 3, so my

research will fill this gap.

Overall feedback:

1. There is a lack of transition between paragraphs and sections. I understand that

you need time to write a better version but please pay close attention to

transition or you will cause confusion.

2. In certain paragraphs, you try to include a lot of ideas and many of them are

scattered and poorly connected. Please read the comments for further details.

3. You need to rename the sections so that each section title includes all of the

main discussions.

4. The reports of some studies are too general and do not reflect the depth of

your reading.

5. When reporting a study conducted in the past, use past tense.

6. Avoid using personal pronouns as much as possible.

Reference list
Barkaoui, K., Brooks, L., Swain, M., & Lapkin, S. (2013). Test-takers’ strategic

behaviors in independent and integrated speaking tasks. Applied

Linguistics, 34(3), 304-324. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/ams046

Bell, J., & Waters, S. (2006). Doing Your Research Project: a Guide for First-Time

Researchers (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/hud/detail.action?docID=6212151

Dashti, L., & Razmjoo, S. A. (2020). An examination of IELTS candidates’

performances at different band scores of the speaking test: A quantitative and

qualitative analysis. Cogent Education, 7(1),

https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2020.1770936

Deng, N. (2006). Guidelines for teaching IELTS listening to Chinese postgraduate

candidates. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/1470
Fernandez, C. J. (2018). Behind a spoken performance: Test takers’ strategic

reactions in a simulated part 3 of the IELTS speaking test. Language Testing in

Asia, 8(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40468-018-0073-4

Huang, H. T. D. (2016). Test-taking strategies in L2 assessment: The test of English

for international communication speaking test. Perceptual and motor

skills, 123(1), 64-90. https://doi.org/10.1177/0031512516660699

Karim, S., & Haq, N. (2014). An Assessment of IELTS Speaking Test. International

Journal of Evaluation and Research in Education, 3(3), 152-157.

http://iaesjournal.com/online/index.php/ijere

Khan, R. (2006). The IELTS speaking test: Analysing culture bias. Malaysian

Journal of ELT Research, 2(1), 20. www.melta.org.my

Seedhouse, P., & Nakatsuhara, F. (2018). The discourse of the IELTS speaking test:

Interactional design and practice. Cambridge University Press.

http://hdl.handle.net/10547/622706
Sultana, K. S. (2021). CHALLENGES EXPERIENCED BY BANGLADESHI IELTS

TEST-TAKERS [Doctoral dissertation, Brac University].

http://hdl.handle.net/10361/15001

Swain, M., Huang, L. S., Barkaoui, K., Brooks, L., & Lapkin, S. (2009). THE

SPEAKING SECTION OF THE TOEFL IBT™(SSTIBT): TEST‐

TAKERS'REPORTED STRATEGIC BEHAVIORS. ETS Research Report

Series, 2009(2), i-118. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2333-8504.2009.tb02187.x