An Analysis of Sentence-Like Utterances of IELTS Mock Speaking Test Scripts

Abstract

The present study examines non-Malaysian candidates’ performance in an IELTS mock speaking test with regards to their use of different types of sentence structure utterances. Audio recorded data was obtained from eight students of three different levels of proficiency, namely; foundation, intermediate and advanced, in which thereafter an analysis was carried out using Radford (1990; 1997) sentence types. A semi-structured interview was also employed to gauge the candidates’ opinions on answering the test questions as well the interlocutor’s views on the candidates’ performance. The test was conducted by an IELTS trained interlocutor. It was found that most candidates were able to understand the questions, their responses were mainly simple sentence utterances indicated by many disjointed and choppy ideas. The semi-structured interview answers show that most candidates’ high level of nervousness and anxiety caused them not to be able to speak fluently, and as a result, their ideas were expressed in simple sentence structures that lacked logical coordination. It is hoped that the findings of the present study would help the current IETLS course module developers to integrate lessons on the different types of sentence structures in training test candidates to express complete and complex structured responses.