a predictive relationship between written and oral components of english language teaching (elt) ph.d. entrance program

In response to a growing demand for higher education and the subsequent need to ensure the selection of the most eligible candidates, university admission programs have constantly improved the quality of their screening and selection processes, over the recent years. this has led to reform initiatives in entrance examination programs of higher education institutes and universities in many countries. inspired by such a reform movement, iran’s educational policymakers have set up university admission policies which mandate inclusion of both written and oral measures in the ph.d. entrance examinations (pees) of the country. despite an essential need for evaluation of change projects, little attention has been given to a timely evaluation of the effectiveness of this change in terms of the intended relationship between the written (as predictor) and oral components (as predicted). the present quantitative-qualitative study, therefore, aimed to shed light on the relation between the two major components, their sub-components, and their contribution to the final admission. to do so, pees performance data of 50 elt and 130 foreign language applicants were first collected. a series of interviews with 15 applicants and 10 elt university instructors were subsequently conducted. the data were investigated using stepwise regression analyses as well as content analyses for thematic extractions. results indicated that the two components of the pees were partially related while two subcomponents, i.e., applicants’ field-specific knowledge and foreign language proficiency were reported as the main significant predictors of their final admission. in the next phase, content analysis revealed that participants had mixed opinions about the degree of relationship between the two components. nevertheless, their perception data regarding the best predictors of the final admission converged with the quantitative phase results. implications for exam developers, universities, and ph.d. candidates are discussed.