there are important practical considerations in any push to institute changes to a
well-established test such as IELTS. One can point to a number of caveats. The first of these
relates to the broad issue of achieving the right balance between the validity of a test and its
reliability (Wigglesworth & Elder, 1996). For the IELTS academic reading test, this would
include, among other things, ensuring that any modified version of the test fit with the overall
structure of the current IELTS battery eg for the reading test to remain as a separate test of
reading without significant overlap with other modules such as writing (Charge & Taylor, 1997);
and for it to be retained as a clerically-markable module within the battery.