The Effect Of Writing Prompts On Test Takers’ Writing Performance And Processes ——A Comparative Study Of Two Summary Writing Tasks

Summary writing is a common target language use task in language testing.In recent years,it has been widely adopted by many large-scale foreign language assessments both at home and abroad,such as the TOEFL,Cambridge English Exams,CET-4/6,NMET and ETIC.The task type of summary writing generally includes summarizing the main points of the source text and summarizing the partial points of the source text,which is mainly reflected by the writing prompt.Broadly speaking,writing prompt refers to any stimulus or material provided by a writing task for test takers to respond to.It is considered as a critical task-related factor that may influence test takers’ writing performance.Previous research focused exclusively on summarizing the whole passage,the present study attaches importance to the effect of writing prompts with different content requirements on test takers’writing performance and writing processes.In this study,with the assistance of SPSS and NVivo,the effects of task prompt on test takers’ performance in summary writing task were explored by a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods,aiming to provide a reference for the development and validation of summary writing task.The study selected an article as the source text and adapted two writing prompts with different content requirements,which was the variable of the study.The results showed that different writing prompts（summarizing the whole text vs.summarizing parts of the text）significantly affected test takers’ writing scores（F=2.748,p<0.05）and fluency（F=.539,p<0.05）of written responses.However,there was no significant difference in the complexity（p>0.05）and accuracy（F=.080,p>0.05）of the written responses between the two tasks.According to the analysis of the think-aloud protocol,it can be found that test takers performed similarly in the two tasks.The overall trend and frequency of writing strategies use were also relatively similar in the two groups,while there still exist some subtle differences.In addition,the retrospective interview data indicated that the majority of test takers perceived that summarizing the whole text is more complex than summarizing the partial contents of the text.However,it was not reflected in their final written responses.Notably,some participants claimed that summarizing the partial contents of the text is more challenging and difficult.This study has to some extent enriched the understanding of the summary writing task,gaining a deeper insight into the impact of writing prompts on the summary writing process and performance.Future research could further investigate the effects of writing prompts on test takers’ writing process and performance in terms of other variables of writing prompts,so as to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the summary writing task.