Job Discussion Forums

[nomad soul]

‘Cultural bias’ fears over English language university test
By Roberta Pennington, The National | January 31, 2016
Source: http://www.thenational.ae/uae/cultural-bias-fears-over-english-language-university-test

ABU DHABI // Emirati teenagers perform poorly in a crucial test of their proficiency in English because they believe the test has an inbuilt cultural bias and because school teaching methods do not adequately prepare them, a new study suggests. In the International English Language Testing System, or IELTS, pupils from the UAE rank lowest among the main 40 countries where the test is taken. The system tests English skills in listening, reading, writing and speaking.

Dr Hilda Freimuth, a senior lecturer at Khalifa University, conducted two studies into the tests after hearing complaints from students over a 10-year period that the test topics were unfamiliar to them and that most of the questions did not relate to their lives. The results of her most recent study are published this month. Dr Freimuth concludes that pupils are not adequately equipped with the critical thinking, graph literacy and reading skills needed to succeed in IELTS. "The IELTS exam doesn’t fit into their world, it’s not written by people from their world, so they’ll run into this time and again,” she said. “The other part of the bias is that the tests don’t really talk about this part of the region, at all. The topics aren’t related to them or to do with anything here.”

There is no pass or fail in IELTS. The system rates students on a range of bands, from 1, a non-user of English, to 9, an expert user. To enter one of the three federal higher education institutions – Zayed University, Higher Colleges of Technology or United Arab Emirates University – students must reach at least band 5. Some schools, such as Khalifa University, require a minimum of 6.

In 2014, the worldwide mean score was 6 for women and 5.8 for men. In the UAE, the mean score for all students was 4.9. In the reading and writing sections of the test, the average score in the UAE was 4.6. “The band score is very low, indicating students in the UAE sitting the exam have a modest ability, at best, to write academically,” Dr Freimuth wrote in her 2012 study of the 4.7 average score that pupils earned then. In her latest study, Dr Freimuth analysed 24 IELTS exams in which 88 per cent of one of the writing tasks required pupils to analyse graphs, tables or charts to write an essay.

Based on the results of the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment, in which UAE pupils came 40th out of 44 countries for problem-solving skills and scored below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average in reading, maths and science, Dr Freimuth wrote: “It is safe to say Emirati students from government high schools will have trouble interpreting” the data from the graphs to properly complete the essay task. Dr Freimuth also found that pupils were likely to come across “a topic related to social sciences and geographical locations related to the West”, which she argued “could easily lead to student perceptions of cultural bias”.

The exam, which is owned by the British Council, IDP: IELTS Australia and Cambridge English Language Assessment, is distributed in the UAE by the British Council and IDP Australia.

Stephen Carey, the British Council’s IELTS global marketing manager, said the test was “fair, accurate and reliable”. “Through careful test design, test development and test trialling, the IELTS partners are able to create tests where test score outcomes are not affected by cultural and background knowledge,” he said. “It has been developed to ensure test consistency and fairness to all test takers regardless of their culture or where the test is taken.”

Dr Freimuth acknowledged that the IELTS was “a very good test”, but said it was designed to test the English skills of a foreign student seeking to study in an English-language, western country. “The exam itself is a solid exam, so if they’re going to use it for this purpose then they’re going to have to train the students properly and give them the skills needed to do well on the exam.” The Government was already moving in that direction, making this year the Year of Reading being one example, she said.

“It’s not the students’ fault that they’re struggling on it. There are all sort of factors at play, cultural, societal, educational and it’s not a negative thing,” said Dr Freimuth. “So the Government needs to decide: are we going to continue using this test or are we going to replace it with something more culturally appropriate?”

Dr Natasha Ridge, executive director of the Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research, said: “There are also a lot of complaints about students’ literacy levels in Arabic, too, so while there may be some contexts that students find confusing, it is my view, from what I have observed, that students very rarely have to write extended pieces of writing, in English or Arabic, under exam conditions. It is this lack of preparation that I think is the main reason why Emirati students do not perform so well in IELTS or other tests of writing. More creative writing practice in schools, in both languages, would be tremendously helpful.”

(End of article)

[veiledsentiments]

Of course IELTS (and TOEFL) exams are culturally biased. But the reality is that students all over the world get the same exam... and the UAE still does poorly.

More excuses for the fact that the students come out of secondary school woefully unprepared to read and write in either English or Arabic. ...and with no critical thinking skills.

As usual, they go for excuses rather than looking at the cause of the weaknesses and putting their resources into fixing them. (ADEC seems to be trying to do so) Next it will be the huge expense of writing their own exams... instead of doing the harder worker of actually teaching.

VS

[rustyrockets]

[dragonpiwo]

Is this league table published?

I think the real problem is with LLN and it starts at school in L1 and L2. I have taught in 5 countries with Arab learners and they are pretty much all the same when it comes to what they find difficult in language learning ie reading and writing. Arab learners can be particularly challenging because some show a high degree of communicative oral ability but can often barely write a coherent/cohesive paragraph without extensive modelling.

Yes, IELTS is a tough exam and a good instructor is needed but thousands get their required band score irrespective of cultural bias. This leads to the obvious conclusion that it is the students who are simply not good enough.

However, out in the GCC, the teachers are always blamed and the bar is simply lowered. There are plenty of institutions who want the money foreign students bring in outside the UK negating a high band score.

Competency based learning and blended learning are the latest fads in this region. I can't see these approaches getting better outcomes.

[veiledsentiments]

This is because of the educational system that is used in nearly all Arabic speaking countries. It is rote learning and memorization. They don't want creative thinkers. Reading is never used for comprehension, but for pronunciation practice (in Arabic and English). Thus they are slow word-by-word readers who are thinking about how to say each word rather than what it means. And we all know that those who can't read also can't write.

[2buckets]

My first ESL job was teaching poor kids in Afghanistan. Chalkboard, barefoot kids used a stick to write in the dust that they sat on. Highly motivated and did very well.

Silent way. At a workshop in Iran someone came from the States to introduce this. The retired US Air Force Colonel director watched for 10 minutes and shut it down and told the presenter to pack his bags and was taken to the airport.

Same thing happened when someone showed up with colored "rods".

You can't make this stuff up.

[veiledsentiments]

[Gulezar]

[nomad soul]

[Geronimo]

Thanks for posting the link to this "National" article, nomad soul.

So much time, money and effort is invested in IELTS exam preparation in the U.A.E.. that it warrants some serious consideration, in my opinion.

Here's what I wrote on the subject on a different thread last August...

"If we look at the table of IELTS results by country of origin for 2014,
where do we find the UAE?
At the very bottom of that table!
http://www.ielts.org/researchers/analysis_of_test_data/percentile_ranks_2013-1.aspx
The IELTS part of this picture is very gloomy indeed!

Almost half of the U.A.E.-based Academic IELTS candidates - 49% - failed to reach Band 5.0 or above.
Compare that figure to the one for Japan - just 9% -
and the scale of the disaster soon becomes clear.

How can we explain this dreadful outcome?$

Whilst it is unsurprising that Arabic speakers find the task of acquiring English more difficult
than those candidates speaking more closely related languages such as German, ( who all scored Band 5.5 or above in the Academic IELTS exams last year ),
I find the fact that candidates from the U.A.E scored way below
those from Qatar, Oman and Egypt much more difficult to explain away.

Is the explanation to be found in the teaching resources applied?
In the nature of the learning environment?
The calibre of the teachers?
I don't think so.

Emiratis may be able to more readily afford to re-take the test too soon
and thus repeat disappointing scores than their counterparts based in poorer countries, such as Egypt.
However, the equivalent figure for Qatar-based candidates is 33%- and for Oman -29%... way below 49%.
And note that the figure for scores below Band 5.0 for candidates from Egypt is only 5%.

The discrepancy is so great that a more fundamental factor must be responsible. "

I wonder if Emirati IELTS candidates are a little less enthusiastic than their GCC counterparts about leaving their homeland behind to study at a foreign university?

Geronimo

[dragonpiwo]

Too many fake experts giving duff advice.

[D. Merit]

[veiledsentiments]