IELTS (International English Language Testing System) is now one of the most popular exams all over the world. According to the data released by the British Council, there are about 200,000 Chinese took the exam in 2012. However, average Chinese did not perform well in this exam. Personally, my performance improved a lot after I learned linguistic course. In my point of view, this exam is closed related to the Semantics study. Therefore, in this paper, I will present the exam in a semantics way. The IELTS exam has four parts---listening, reading, writing and speaking. I will look into them respectively from a semantics perspective.
The listening part has much to do with context. Hall E. T. defines the “context” as the information that surrounds an event; it is inextricably bound up with the meaning of the event. Thus, we have high-context and low context. A high-context communication or message means most of the information is already in the person, not in words. A low context communication is the just the opposite, that is, the important information is stated. IELTS is made by the British Council, and Britain is a typical low-context country. Nevertheless, China is a typical high-context country and we Chinese are affected by that culture in the IELTS exam. In Chinese exams, we have questions that need us to infer the content or the relationship between the speaking people or guess the intended meaning behind a word. But in IELTS, they never have questions like these. The answers to all IELTS questions shall be from the passage itself. We shall not guess or think too much. The only thing we shall do in an IELTS listening exam is listening carefully and remember what the record said. Perhaps that is also how people in a low-context country communicate with each other.
The reading part can be explained by G. LEECH’s 7 types of meaning. According to G. LEECH, there