Entry levels and concurrent support

A particularly serious problem is the failure of many universities to require a proficiency level in English sufficient to enable students to cope with academic studies without English inhibiting their performance… As one of the people who developed the original specifications for the various IELTS levels, my own advice has always been that the minimum desirable level for students entering academic programs is an Overall Bandscore of 7. If students are to be accepted at 6.5 or 6, they should be offered on-going English language support…

Ratings v. profiles

The results of an IELTS test provide a separate proficiency rating for Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing. However, most universities simply use the Overall Bandscore for entry purposes. That score is more or less an average of the scores gained in each of the four skills. So, entry rules commonly require, for example, an Overall Bandscore of 6 with no score below 5.5. This means that one or more skills might be higher than 6 but others lower, and so it is no wonder that such students struggle.

When we developed IELTS, our intention was that universities would look at each course and decide what level of proficiency in each skill students needed to cope with the course activities.

Ideally, they would specify a profile such as

	Speaking:	7
	Listening:	6
	Writing:	7
	Reading:	6

This is important because, for example, a student in Literature or Law might need a much higher Reading proficiency than, say, a student in a Maths course. A student in Education going out into a school for teaching practice would need scores of at least 7 in speaking and listening.

This is part of an edited version of a talk entitled 'English Language Problems in Universities' by Professor Ingram broadcast on the ABC's Lingua Franca program on Saturday, July 2, 2005.