Some evidence of the development of L2 reading-into-writing skills at three levels

Abstract

While an integrated format has been widely incorporated into high-stakes writing assessment, there is relatively little research on students’ cognitive processing involved in integrated reading-into-writing tasks. Even research which reviews how the reading-into-writing construct is distinct from one level to the other is scarce. Using a writing process questionnaire, we examined and compared test takers’ cognitive processes on integrated reading-into-writing tasks at three levels. More specifically, the study aims to provide evidence of the predominant reading-into-writing processes appropriate at each level (i.e., the CEFR B1, B2, and C1 levels). The findings of the study reveal the core processes which are essential to the reading-into-writing construct at all three levels. There is also a clear progression of the reading-into-writing skills employed by the test takers across the three CEFR levels. A multiple regression analysis was used to examine the impact of the individual processes on predicting the writers’ level of reading-into-writing abilities. The findings provide empirical evidence concerning the cognitive validity of reading-into-writing tests and have important implications for task design and scoring at each level.