Demonstrating the cognitive validity and face validity of PTE Academic Writing items Summarize Written Text and Write Essay

This study examines the cognitive validity of two item types of the Writing Section of the PTE Academic test – Summarize Written Text and Write Essay - within Weir’s (2005) socio-cognitive framework for test validation. The study focuses on cognitive validity by investigating and comparing the cognitive processes of a group of ESL test takers undertaking Summarize Written Text (an integrated writing item) and Write Essay (an independent writing item). Cognitive validity is a ‘measure of how closely it [a writing task] represents the cognitive processing involved in writing contexts beyond the test itself’ (Shaw and Weir, 2007:34). In addition, the study investigates test takers’ opinions regarding the two different writing item types: independent and integrated. Test takers’ scores on both items are compared to investigate if the two performances correlate. The study uses screen capture technique to record test takers’ successive writing processes on both items, followed by retrospective stimulated recalls. The findings demonstrate that Summarize Written Text and Write Essay engage different cognitive processes that are essential in academic writing contexts. In particular, macro-planning and discourse synthesis processes such as selecting relevant ideas from source text are elicited by the Summarize Written Text item whereas processes in micro-planning, monitoring and revising at low levels are activated on the Write Essay item. In terms of test performances, the results show that test takers in this study performed significantly better on Write Essay than on Summarize Written Text.