The ELTS Revision Project

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The ELTS Revision Project

ELTS continued in the form outlined above until 1989. During the 1980s the test numbers were quite low (4000 in 1981 rising to 10,000 by 1985), and it was clear that there were practical difficulties with the administration of the test, relating to the number of test items and the time taken to complete the test; there were also powerful reasons for change on the grounds of test redundancy.

In 1987 British Council and UCLES EFL (now known as Cambridge ESOL) commissioned Edinburgh University to conduct a validation study (see Criper and Davies, 1988; Hughes, Porter and Weir, 1988). Following this report the ELTS Revision Project, under the academic direction of Professor Charles Alderson of Lancaster University, was set up to oversee the design and construction of the revised test. (Alderson and Clapham, 1993)

There was consensus to broaden the international participation in the revision project and in response to this the International Development Program of Australian Universities and Colleges (IDP), now known as IELTS Australia, joined British Council and UCLES to form an international partnership, reflected in the new name for the test: The International English Language Testing System. The immediate outcome of this partnership was the secondment of an Australian academic, Professor David Ingram of Griffith University, to the revision project.

The recommendations of the revision team to simplify and shorten ELTS were accepted and a compromise was sought "between practicality and maximum predictive power". The number of subject-specific modules was reduced from six to three and the Non-Academic test was replaced by the General Module. IELTS (the International English Language Testing System) first became operational in 1989. (Clapham and Alderson, 1997)