Risk of 'inflation' of IELTS scores when retesting a skill?

Responding to Thanh Nien Newspaper earlier, a representative of IDP Vietnam said that IELTS partners are working with relevant parties to be able to deploy One Skill Retake (OSR) in Vietnam. This feature allows candidates to retake one of the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing within 60 days of receiving the official results. This is good news for candidates who will take the IELTS test in the near future.'

N RISK OF INFLATION

As someone who has taken the IELTS test 3 times for work and study, I understand how expensive it is. Previously, to improve the overall score, candidates could only retake or retake all 4 skills. In the future, thanks to OSR, candidates can save money by retaking one of the 4 skills with an unsatisfactory score.

Students of Nguyen Huu Tho High School (District 4, Ho Chi Minh City) in an IELTS class with foreigners in October 2023

From the IELTS partners’ perspective, this is also a good way to increase profits. Spending nearly 5 million VND to retake 4 skills will be difficult for many candidates, but the prospect of spending less but helping to change the total score will make you change your mind. Because, with the IELTS scoring method, just changing 0.5 in one skill can make a difference in the overall result.

However, allowing candidates to retake an IELTS skill also has its drawbacks. The two biggest problems are the possibility of "inflation" of scores as well as the possibility of completely changing the current learning and testing strategy.

According to reports on IELTS in Vietnam, candidates are getting younger with more than 60% of test takers in 2022 aged 16 - 22. The average score also increased from 5.9/9.0 in 2015 to 6.2 in 2022, causing the IELTS "standard threshold" to increase as well. About 10 years ago, when I was a student, achieving 7.0 was enough to teach IELTS, but now, many centers only recruit teachers above 8.0, not to mention pedagogical capacity.

With the feature of retaking an IELTS skill, the story of "inflation" of scores can be pushed further. In this case, a high score does not mean an increase in the quality of candidates, because there will be many people willing to "give up" a skill and then pay to retake the test if they feel they do not have enough time to study, or studying 4 skills at the same time seems to be too much.

For example, according to the current process, a session will test three skills: listening, reading, and writing. Many candidates complain that by the time they take the written test, they are too tired and this affects their test results. The writing test also takes more time than the listening and reading skills, so many candidates do not focus on writing skills.

Of course, it is too early to say whether the above change can lead to "inflation" of scores. To evaluate the impact of a change as well as the policy of the education sector, there needs to be data to evaluate, such as in this case, the scores of candidates after retaking an IELTS skill test.

Author Bui Minh Duc

CHANGE THE WAY YOU LEARN

What concerns me more is how students view IELTS preparation. Allowing candidates to retake an IELTS skill reflects more clearly that this is a standardized test that requires strategies to be effective, rather than simply assessing the candidate's language ability.

This is not a new thing, as many people have always believed that IELTS preparation tips and tricks do not help candidates develop too much language skills but mainly their certificate exam skills. However, by retaking a skill, many candidates can change their entire exam strategy.

The IELTS retake period is 60 days. This is a long period of time, enough to improve a skill score when candidates only need to focus on learning one skill instead of spreading out all 4 skills. Many people think that retaking a skill is only a solution in case the candidate gets a lower score than expected. I don’t think it’s that simple, or there will still be groups of candidates who think differently.

When test preparation centers keep talking about effective learning and testing strategies, and emphasize IELTS as a test with a scoring scale, it is certainly a viable strategy to consider giving up a skill to focus on later. And if the goal of IELTS is to get a high score and not to assess one's language ability, candidates will find every way to "win".

Allowing candidates to retake an IELTS skill also has its drawbacks. The two biggest problems are the possibility of score inflation and the possibility of completely changing the current learning and testing strategy.

How to retake a skill?

On the official website of IDP Vietnam, the organization said that the IELTS OSR feature is currently applied in 112 countries and territories, including some Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, "and by early 2024 will be expanded to all remaining countries and territories where IELTS tests are held".

According to the IELTS co-organizers, OSR was first introduced in Australia in November 2022. This feature allows candidates to retake one of the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing if they do not achieve a satisfactory score on the first attempt, instead of having to retake the entire test as before. And regardless of which skill they choose to retake, the fee is the same.

After completing the OSR test, candidates will receive a new test result form that displays information about the skill they retested, along with the new results of the retested skill and the results of the 3 previous skills in the first test. The time to receive this new test result form is from 3 to 5 days, according to the IELTS co-organizers.

However, if you want to register for the OSR exam, you must also meet all three requirements, including having taken the exam at a testing center that provides OSR services; taking all four skills in the computer-based format and receiving official results; and only registering for the OSR feature within 60 days of the first exam. You can only retake the exam once, not four times for four different skills.

IDP Vietnam representative shared that the IELTS OSR test is widely recognized and accepted by schools, governments and relevant organizations around the world . "OSR is professionally and academically designed to provide candidates with the necessary tools to achieve their educational and career goals, providing the most flexibility and convenience for candidates' needs," this person said.

Ngoc Long

The nature of foreign language learning

Learning a foreign language is not an "addition" where you learn 3 skills today, and 2 months later learn the remaining skill to be able to master all 4 skills. Learning a foreign language should be a "multiplication" because when 4 skills go together, the language proficiency will increase a lot.

Accepting to exclude a skill in the learning process to "push" the score of other skills, sometimes learners do not realize that it is difficult to link the skills together to create general language ability. And IELTS should only be seen as a small journey, not the end of learning English. Because, learners should go further to look at other tests or the use of English in a variety of environments.

(*) The author is a Fulbright scholar, master of communication and digital capacity at Clark University (USA)

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