Summarising skills at different proficiency levels: Rater perspectives on reading-into-writing and listening-into-writing performances

The increasing use of integrated tasks in language assessment has generated research interest, especially in relation to the features of learners' source text use (e.g. Knoch & Sitajalabhorn, 2013; Plakans & Gebril, 2013). However, little has been done to examine features of summary responses at different levels of proficiency on different integrated task types. The presentation reports findings from a recent study to investigate the construct of two summary tasks: reading-into-writing and listening-into-writing. From the perspective of experts' judgement, the study aimed to identify the features of effective summary writing at different proficiency levels between the two task types. Four expert panellists came together for a focus group discussion. Prior to the discussion, they were given the relevant task input, and 10 performance samples from each task type. The 10 samples from each task included two performances from students across five proficiency levels, i.e. CEFR A2 to C2. The panellists ranked the 10 performance samples on each task from most effective to least effective, making notes on features of each summary that influenced their decision. They brought the annotated summary responses to the focus group discussion, which was audio recorded and transcribed. NVivo 11 was used to facilitate the identification and coding of salient features. A range of features was identified, with some noted in both summary task types, while others were noted only in either one of the task types. The presentation will present the findings and discuss implications of the impact of task features on L2 summary performance.