Testing Language, but What?: Examining the Carrier Content of IELTS Preparation Materials from a Critical Perspective

ABSTRACT The implicit sociocultural functioning of the content of high-stakes English language proficiency tests is a rarely-explored concern in language assessment. This study attempts to bring critical views of language testing and critical discourse studies together to examine the content of IELTS preparation materials in search of topics that are reflected and reproduced through this content. Fourteen sample tests (including reading texts, transcripts of listening files, speaking cue-cards, and writing topics) were investigated through a qualitative content analysis process. The emerging 663 coded episodes came together in four major categories of topics that shape the overall content of these IELTS practice books: Entertainment, Money, Nature, and Education, plus a miscellaneous set of less prominent topics. The findings indicate the discursive accentuation of specific aspects of these themes as well as certain patterns of the inclusion/exclusion of settings and participants. We argue that the discursive construction of such a content landscape can shape specific sociocultural orientations, and can naturalize and reproduce mental models and values far from the universal face of an international high-stakes test.