Job Discussion Forums

johnchina · Joined: 24 Apr 2006 Posts: 816

I'm new here, but I've read a lot of posting about IELTS in China. Let me get the ball rolling on another discussion with this thought. Chinese IELTS candidates get higher scores than they deserve because the BC and IDP are desperate to a) get paying Chinese students into Brit/Aussie unis and b) they know that when New TOEFL comes online, Chinese candidates will choose the easier test.

mondrian

johnchina · Joined: 24 Apr 2006 Posts: 816

I think that's a little naive myself. The controls that are in place are not necessarily designed to ensure that correct scores are given.

william wallace · Joined: 14 May 2003 Posts: 2869 Location: in between

dajiang · Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 663 Location: Guilin!

Here in Holland the entry level for uni's is somewhere like a 5.5. I've met people who had 5's on their IELTS, but they'd have to do a semester of language training before they could start on their main course.

So the money comes in anyway. I don't think the scores are in anyway different. It would be good to hear from an IELTS instructor on this though.

The fact of the matter is that there are trainloads of students in Oz, the UK, and anywhere else really, that don't speak English well enough to be there in the first place.

Dajiang

mondrian · Posted: Tue May 16, 2006 1:53 pm Post subject: Re: I disagree

SueH · Joined: 01 Feb 2003 Posts: 1022 Location: Northern Italy

The University of Buckingham, of course, being the first and I think only private and fully commercial university in the UK.

johnchina · Joined: 24 Apr 2006 Posts: 816

The problem is that the standards Mondrian is talking about are only meant to ensure that all examiners at a given centre are giving the same score, not that examiners in different centres would give the same scores. William Wallace is right in saying that an even bigger problem is that unis don't set high enough standards.