Frequently asked questions

Is IELTS culturally biased?
All the texts and tasks in the IELTS modules are designed to be widely accessible and to accommodate as far as possible candidates’ prior linguistic, cultural and educational experience irrespective of nationality or first language. Removal in 1995 of the thematic link between the Reading and Writing modules was in part for this reason (see above). Topics or contexts of language use which might introduce a bias against any group of candidates of a particular background (e.g. due to gender, ethnic origin) are avoided at the materials writing/editing stage. Pretesting procedures prior to live test construction monitor feedback on texts and topics and so provide another safeguard in this regard. An external study by Mayor, Hewings, North and Swann (2000) which investigated the written performance of different L1 groups found no evidence of significant cultural bias due to task.