READING SKILLS FORMATION: CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE IELTS MATERIALS

Abstract

In this article, we focus on the description and analysis of the IELTS material used for preparation and testing reading receptive communication skills. Two IELTS test formats, General Training and Academic are studied. This research studies educational materials and evaluates them by the scheme described above by means of comparative analysis. The findings are presented in two parts, in descriptive and quantitative forms. The descriptive part presents the topics of the texts, forms of narration, and sentence structures. The morphological word structures and vocabulary of the texts and exercises and/or test tasks are compared. Since the key words in the questions to the texts of the reading section are paraphrased, the authors analyzed these questions and texts using the approach that comprises the personal elements if it is challenging or not. The quantitative part includes the number of questions that refer to vocabulary and grammar, namely, to morphological and syntactic characteristics of speech in each section of the Reading Module. The usage of specific British, American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand expressions and facts in the texts as evidence of differences in their cultures is described. The result of the analysis is classified and analyzed according to quantitative and qualitative characteristics.