A Comparative Study of Chinese Test Takers’ Writing Performance in Integrated and Discrete Tasks: Scores and Recurrent Word Combinations in PTE Academic

Abstract

Despite an increasing number of studies on L1 Chinese students' L2 English writing in recent years, little research is conducted on Chinese test takers' performance in high-stakes international tests, particularly in terms of how integrated and discrete assessment may impact on their writing. This book chapter, therefore, aims to fill this gap by comparing Chinese and non-Chinese test takers' responses in different writing tasks of PTE Academic in terms of scoring and use of recurrent word combinations. As an international test of academic English, PTE Academic includes both the traditional design of independent essay writing as well as two integrated tasks of summary writing from listening or reading input.Written samples from 500 Chinese test takers and another 500 test takers of other L1s were randomly chosen from PTE Academic and analysed. The results indicate that Chinese test takers outperformed their non-Chinese peers in the tasks of read-to-summarise and essay writing. Chinese test takers also tended to write longer responses with more occurrences of recurrent word combinations, and they used more stance expressions in the essays compared with their peers. A closer examination of highly frequent word combinations, however, suggests a relationship between task type and the language elicited, regardless of test takers' L1.