Investigating the quality of source integration in an academic writing exam

Integrated writing tasks have become the standard for many English language exams. However, do they elicit the type of source use expected in academic settings? To address this question, this study reports on source integration on an operational English exam administered in Japan. Responses of 24 secondary students on two forms of the exam were analyzed and coded for stylistic conventions, language transformation (e.g. paraphrase), and rhetorical functions. While many responses lacked the sophistication and formal conventions of undergraduate- and graduate-level responses analyzed in previous studies, they revealed test takers’ emerging ability to engage with sources in a way that reflects the expectations of academic writing.