Validating an integrated reading-into-writing task to assess writing for academic purposes

This paper reports on two studies by Trinity College London on the validity of a new reading-into-writing test task. The first examined cognitive processes in sixteen international students at three U.K. institutions. The second gathered perceptions from fifty EAP instructors and ninety international students across twenty U.K. universities. Participants spanned a wide range of disciplines, education levels, and linguistic backgrounds. The studies establish strong correspondence between real-life academic writing and the new task. The first study, using think-aloud methodology, confirmed the task elicits authentic cognitive processes aligned with existing academic writing models, while also revealing additional processes related to conceptualization, discourse construction, and monitoring, adding definitional detail to the construct. The second study, using questionnaires and interviews, found most stakeholders view the task as similar to real-life academic writing. It also documents students’ writing needs and abilities, and EAP assessment practices in the context of emerging challenges from generative AI. This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ .