Textual features of CAE texts compared with IELTS reading and essential undergraduate texts

Green, A.B., C.J. Weir, S.C.H. Chan, L. Taylor, J. Field, F. Nakatsuhara and S. Bax.

October 2010 to January 2012.

Funding Body: Cambridge English Language Testing

Summary:  In this project we extend this line of research to cover CAE texts (provided by Cambridge ESOL) and situate CAE in relation to the IELTS texts and the small corpus of essential undergraduate reading texts assembled for the 2005-6 Weir et al. IELTS research project as one indication of the validity of CAE reading tests as indicators of academic reading ability.

In an addition to our original proposal, based on Green (2011), we also situate CAE in relation to other "Main Suite" Cambridge examinations that target the levels directly above (Cambridge English: Proficiency: CPE) and below it (Cambridge English: First: FCE) according to the levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) (Council of Europe, 2001) and the Cambridge ESOL Common Scale. This then allows us to map the levels of text difficulty operationalised in the Cambridge tests to the features of undergraduate texts identified in the Green, Ünaldi and Weir (2010) study.

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References

• Khalifa, H  & Weir, C (2009) Examining Reading Cambridge UCLES: Cambridge University Press