臺灣雅思考生寫作考試問題之探究

本文是首篇對臺灣雅思考生在其寫作部分的典型錯誤進行探討的文章，可為台灣的大學英文寫作老師提供改進教學的參考與反思。作者以雅思考試寫作部分的四項評分標準對考生的寫作進行探究，發現多數考生寫作的問題不是在於對考題的理解，而是在其語篇發展方面顯得有局限，而考生對學術寫作結構和方式的領悟不足，更加深了考生在寫作部分犯錯的機會。統計分析顯示，臺灣考生的平均總分和寫作分項的得分，均以至少一個級別(Band)低於一般英國大學碩士生的入學分數標準。分析顯示寫作的內部四項得分和寫作總分具有極強的內部相闕，而兩篇寫作之間的外部相關不明顯，其明顯的考試結構效度可供臺灣各大學老師參考。筆者認為臺灣雅思考生寫作部分的偏差，可能和其接受的英語教學的形態與考試制度的思維模式有關，值得大學英文老師的注意。

關鍵字

雅思寫作；臺灣雅思考生；測試回波效應

並列摘要

More Taiwanese young people are taking the IELTS test in order to study abroad, but their striking weaknesses in the Writing subtest affect their scores considerably. It is significant to study their writing problems so as to provide positive washback effect on local college ELT (English language teaching) programmes. This paper analyzes the major errors that Taiwanese IELTS candidates make in their Writing test. Findings show there is a gap of one score band between their mean score and the acceptable score by most UK universities. This research shows writing topic is not a significant factor in this gap, but most candidates do not extend their writing sufficiently to reach a satisfactory level. Findings also show their writing is limited by a considerable lack of syntactic devices and by some typical errors in their writing approaches, which indicates a lack of practice in academic essay writing. Statistical analysis shows that internal correlations between sub-test scores and the total score are very high, but the correlations between scores of two writing tasks under the four criteria are satisfactorily low, indicating very good test construct validity. So, local college English teachers may take this phenomenon into consideration. It is argued that the fact that overall writing performance of Taiwanese IELTS candidates tends to stay within a safety zone of relatively simple syntactic range could be affected to a large degree by the characteristics of the local ELT curriculum and testing system. Although the purpose of the IELTS test is different from that of the local college English tests, it is beneficial that the test functions of IELTS viewed from construct validity can be used for reference by local universities so as to consolidate college ELT programmes in Taiwan.