An Exploration of the Predictive Validity of the IELTS Academic Writing Task 01 in Bangladesh context: Expectations and realities

Abstract

This paper reflected the scale of predictability in terms of the academic performance of the learners in the IELTS academic writing test. Predominantly, the researcher focused on task 01 of theacademic writing test as it may include some more activities where the learners might receive the opportunity to explore more while showing their skills broadly. A number of issues was discussed by the researcher that she obtained from the data analysis while conducting the research, such as, difficulties in understanding the charts, wording the statistics and ratio, producing the writing in accurate grammar and others. Moreover, this research was conducted by following the mixed method where both of the qualitative and quantitative analysis were comprised. However, the opinions were attained from both of the ends. In one hand, the test takers expressed their obstacles and requirements whereas, the respective instructors of this genre also opined about this issue. Hence, this study examined task 01 of the IELTS academic writing test elaborately to apprehend the measurement of predictability in terms of the academic performance of the learners. As a consequence, the researcher marked some substantial outcomes. For instance, the issues like grammatical weakness, bindings in using the vocabulary, being cohesive in writing, depicting the ratio duly and others were upheld by the respondents. This paper also provides a brief idea about a disruption in showing academic performance in task 01 of IELTS writing test particularly. Finally, some tasks were suggested that may increase the level of predictability in favor of the academic performance.