The folks at LANGUAGECERT have published a new report that compares LanguageCert and IELTS scores. Note that the report is dated October 2024, but was only made available in the past couple of weeks (before that a preliminary report was available).
The report says: “The current study found a very high overall correlation between LANGUAGECERT Academic and IELTS Academic (r = .87). This strong correlation is important as it suggests a substantial similarity in the constructs measured by the two tests. It implies consistency in how the two tests rank test takers according to their language abilities and that both assess similar aspects of academic English proficiency. Scores on one test can be reasonably indicative of performance on the other. “
It is worth mentioning here that the content of the LanguageCert test is really quite similar to the IELTS Academic test (a theme I explored last year after taking the test). About half of this report compares the content of the two tests and while differences are highlighted, they aren’t quite as striking as the differences between, say, the IELTS and TOEFL tests.
Do take a moment to check page 44 of the report for some comments about how familiarity with a test can impact this sort of report. That’s a topic I’ve been mulling over since reading the new TOEFL/IELTS concordance a few days ago so I’m really happy to see it directly addressed in this report. In my neck of the woods a participant in this sort of study might be really, really, REALLY familiar with one test… and have just a passing familiarity with the other one.
Finally, there is some interesting data on page 40 that hints at which markets this test enjoys the most success. The top three nationalities of participants were: Chinese (47%), Indian (26%), Iraqi (9%). Some may be surprised that the LanguageCert test has a large Iraqi customer base, but that does track with what I’ve been told in recent months.
Slightly interesting fact: when writing about the TOEFL/IELTS concordance I observed that none of the participants achieved an IELTS writing score of 8.5 or 9.0. Of the 1008 participants in this study, one had a writing score of 8.5 and no one had a score of 9.0.