The IELTS partners have published an excellent article by Nicola Latimer, Chihiro Inoue, Samantha Chan and Daniel MK Lam about how learners process lectures that involve both auditory and textual content… and how that sort of stuff could be included in assessments.
The authors note in their introduction that:
“Currently, the listening component in most major international language tests used for university admissions (e.g. IELTS, TOEFL iBT, PTE Academic, CAE) involves the presentation of audio material as the primary/sole source of information for comprehension.”
And in the conclusion:
“We argue that tests of lecture listening should present audio and slide text simultaneously as input, as real-life academic lectures would. The input would then need to cover a range of degrees of integration between slide text and the lecturer’s speech.”
On stage at PIE Live 26, I spoke about how English tests should iterate and evolve to keep up with research and with the test taker journey. I spoke even more about it on the convention floor. I mentioned how test companies themselves often produce research that seems to wither on the vine, never managing to influence the assessments themselves.
One hopes that the research at hand eventually has an influence on the IELTS test.
That said, I’m reminded of an earlier IELTS report about the usefulness of integrated writing assessment which ended with:
“The question is not whether an integrated writing task can be implemented in an official IELTS test, but rather, the question is when and how it can be best implemented.”
Those words were written several years ago. We don’t seem to be any closer to seeing an integrated writing task in the IELTS.