Abstract:
This is a report of a research project to investigate vocabulary use by candidates in the current (since 2001) version of the IELTS Speaking Test, in which Lexical resource is one of the four criteria applied by examiners to rate candidate performance. For this purpose, a small corpus of texts was created from transcriptions of 88 IELTS Speaking Tests recorded under operational conditions at 21 test centres around the world. The candidates represented a range of proficiency levels from Band 8 down to Band 4 on the nine-band IELTS reporting scale. The data analysis involved two phases: the calculation of various lexical statistics based on the candidates’ speech, followed by a more qualitative analysis of the full transcripts to explore, in particular, the use of formulaic language. In the first phase, there were measures of lexical output, lexical variation and lexical sophistication, as well as an analysis of the vocabulary associated with particular topics in Parts 2 and 3 of the test.