Not having the right level of English language proficiency can prevent students from succeeding in their courses and stop professionals from doing their jobs effectively and safely.
That’s one of the implications Dr Amanda Müller and Andrew Brenner highlight in their recent research, jointly funded by the IELTS Partners. It highlights inconsistencies in English proficiency requirements across universities and professional bodies.
Download the summary report and watch the video to discover how these language testing gaps impact student success, professional readiness, and public safety. Learn about the practical recommendations for universities and employers to create consistent standards that truly prepare students for their careers.
We actually need to establish that people have the English skills to communicate in linguistically demanding context.
We actually have to look after the safety of the public and to improve our care. And to do that, you've got to communicate well and have good English language skills too.
We conducted this research by looking at the standards in Australia, USA, UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Ireland because they're English medium countries and they're actually destination countries for international students and people are migrating for professional registration.
We also looked at the university requirements to enter in the courses that actually lead to professions, such as education, law, medicine, nursing, psychology, and social work.
And we gathered the top 1000 university entry scores and we put it into a massive database.
We used IELTS as the benchmark score. So one of the significant findings from our study was that they were actually major inconsistencies for English proficiency requirements for entry into universities for the same course.
Another finding was that the professions and the university entry requirements or minimum language requirements didn't match up.
So you have university students who are doing placement sometimes in their first semester of study and they're practising on the public, but they haven't actually got the language requirements that are needed for professional registration.
High ranked universities also tended to have higher English language requirements, but they still fell short of the test maker recommendations.
The most surprising thing we found was the clear discrepancy between equivalent scores on tests. This is like saying a certificate is equivalent to a bachelor's degree. That's how stark the difference was sometimes.
For professionals, they're relying on English language testing to ensure that the people are going to be working with the public, have sufficient language skills to interact and to receive the information and to be able to give information to teams and, and documentation and the sort of things that professionals do.
For universities, there's a risk that students may struggle and that they may resort to cheating. The course progression might be slowed down and there might be higher fail rates or if not higher fail rates then a lot of stress for the student themselves when they go on to progress to be professionals that they may not get the score required, the language proficiency required to practise as a professional.
What is worse is that when we have poor score setting and equivalence is that it encourages people to shop around for the easiest option and so they can buy their way into a better option for them, a better outcome, rather than focusing on what the real issue is here.
A person starts to think in English at around an IELTS 7.0, which is really interesting because before that they're translating in their head and this is a really slow process.
So they're dealing with the public translating in their heads and trying to provide complex patient care or deal with a complex legal case or manage a classroom. It sort of doesn't work.
English language acquisition is like an upside down pyramid.
At the lower levels, you just have less area to cover to get a a good score, but as you go up better in your skill, you've got broader areas to cover and much more work to sort of get to the top.
IELTS scores aren't like the measurements on a ruler, it's more exponential, like an earthquake. So what we find is that errors tend to reduce exponentially, not equal parts.
Our advice from, not only this study, but from previous research I've done is for universities to involve experts when setting test scores.
You know, just maybe ask IELTS to have a consultation with them.
It says that universities have scores which are a bit too low.
Our advice to professional bodies is to set appropriate scores on the different tests and just revisit what what score requirements you have at the moment.
Ideally, professional bodies who are overseeing professions with linguistically demanding situations and contexts should explore IELTS 7.5 because that's what the test makers recommend.
Professional bodies should also consider if they accredit a course where students are involved that that course has the same language requirements as needed for registration given that the students are going to practise in public.
From our research, the key actions that can be taken for professional bodies and universities is to pay close attention to score setting and equivalent score setting and we recommend that the test makers are involved in this process. And I would probably encourage even national standards to be adopted and to really look at how other countries are setting standards too.