A few months back, Paul Seedhouse was awarded a grant of £30,000 from the British Council for research on: ‘Candidates Questioning Examiners in the IELTS Speaking Test: An Intervention Study‘.
Paul writes:
This study aims to evaluate the effect of an intervention, namely an additional component in the Speaking Test. This is a very short section in which the candidate has to ask questions on a topic to the examiner, who will reply. Asking questions is a necessary skill for university students and may or may not give raters useful additional data. The outcome will be an evaluation of whether candidate-led question-answer sequences are in fact produced and whether value is added or not.
This is the fourth grant Paul has received for researching the IELT Speaking Test and the findings may feed into the next revision of the Test format. IELTS Tests are currently taken by over 2.5 million people each year.