Integrated Language Assessment: Bringing Reading and Writing Together

It is common to divide language assessment into four separate skills (i.e., listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and assess each one separately. This language skill–based approach to assessment certainly has value for a number of reasons. Students and other stakeholders often need specific feedback on progress in each skill. For example, a learner may need support in writing even if their reading skills are strong, and being stronger in one skill than another is not unusual.

Skill Integration

However, outside the classroom, language skills rarely work so distinctly! When we use English in everyday life, we usually combine several skills at the same time. We read an email or text message and write a reply in response, read instructions and complete tasks. During authentic or real-life communication, language skills support one another, functioning together, to achieve a communicative purpose. A usual challenge in effective assessment is to enhance the authenticity feature—mirroring the real-life use of language skills.

If our goal is to help learners develop communicative competence, then assessments should reflect the way communication actually works. Adopting an integrated assessment approach (i.e., assessing two or more skills at once) for reading and writing is based on research, which shows a strong correlation between these two skills.

Communicative Competence

Canale’s (1983) influential model of communicative competence is relevant to the integrated approach. This model laid the foundation of communicative language teaching and is based on the following four components:

• • Grammatical competence (using vocabulary and grammar with accuracy)
  • Sociolinguistic competence (using language appropriately in social situations)
  • Strategic competence (handling communication breakdowns and using context-specific strategies)
  • Discourse competence (connecting ideas and organizing texts logically)

The model can be used to assess how effectively language learners can understand meaning and interact in conversations, both in speech and writing. For instance, when educators assess reading and writing together, they possibly create opportunities for learners to demonstrate skills related to the four components.

To get started with reading-writing integrated assessment, you can target the coverage of the following subskills:

Integrated Reading-Writing Subskills

Integrated tasks allow students to practice several of these skills, if not all, at once during an assessment task, in a purposeful and realistic way.

Designing Reading-Writing Assessments

To get started with the test design, consider the following three parts, which are followed by some example assessment tasks.

1. Write Specifications

When planning an integrated assessment, outline the basic description of the task. These specifications will help the task reflect communicative goals rather than isolated skills.

• • Purpose (what to measure?)
  • Skills/subskills involved (see the table above)
  • Task type and length (as needed)
  • Scoring rubric (e.g., organization, content, accuracy, relevance)

2. Design Tasks

Choose tasks that involve both reading and writing by focusing the specific subskills to be assessed. In designing these tasks, consider these aspects:

• • Decide which skill of the two (reading or writing) and related subskills to target more than the other (or both equally).
  • Select or develop tasks that reflect everyday communication.
  • Align the writing output with the reading input for skill integration (i.e., the writing task directly depends on the content of the reading text).
  • Ensure that the reading input provides sufficient information to write meaningfully and, most importantly, that textual complexity doesn’t become a barrier to the writing task.
  • Pilot the task with a small group first to effectively integrate the skills.

3. Evaluate and Interpret Score

Grading an integrated assessment task requires a clear rubric. This rubric should cover all skills/subskills, but weighting could be adjusted depending on the test specifications. So, reading and writing may or may not be weighed equally. In addition to assessing general language accuracy, consider the following aspects when evaluating an integrated reading-writing task:

• • How well the learner comprehended the text
  • How accurately they responded to the task (requirements and the prompt)
  • How effectively they organized ideas/information
  • How appropriately they used language (e.g., tone, register, and mechanics) for the specific purpose/situation

Reading-Writing Integrated Assessment Tasks

Following are four easy-to-do integrated tasks of varying sizes that educators can use for (in-class) assessment.

Assessment 1: Story Gap-Fill

Part A: Choose a simple short story (500–700 words) that is divided into several paragraphs (e.g., 6 paragraphs). Remove 2nd, 4th and 6th paragraphs. Set a word limit for all three missing paragraphs. Ask students to write in the three missing paragraphs following the sequence of events and the direction of the plot. They can be creative but need to follow the logical flow of the story. 

Part B: Students work in pairs to compare their responses. Then, they discuss and negotiate one set of the missing paragraphs for the pair.

Skills Integrated: Reading for meaning, inferencing, using appropriate vocabulary, co-constructing, and synthesizing creatively.

Weighting: Reading: 40%, Writing: 60%

Assessment 2: Email Response

Provide a full email, from an authentic source if possible (anonymize place, people, and products). Ask students to read the email and write a response by setting a word limit.

Skills Integrated: Understanding purpose, identifying key information, organizing a response.

Weighting: Reading 50%, Writing: 50%

Assessment 3: Read and Respond

Use a latest short news article or story (about 500 words) on a simple topic relevant to students’ interest and locale. Students read the article and write their opinion or response into two paragraphs using this prompt: Do you agree or disagree with the writer? Give reasons and examples.

Skills Integrated: Reading for main ideas, evaluating information, developing argument, and writing coherently.

Weighting: Reading: 60%, Writing: 40%

Assessment 4: World Travel (A Major Project)

This extended, multistep task can be completed over several lessons and encourages deeper learning.

Step 1: Country Selection

Each student individually chooses one country that they would like to visit. Then they search for information about that country from different sources (some specific sources could be suggested) and take notes.

Step 2: Writing the Report

Based on their notes, students write their findings as a travel plan in four coherent paragraphs using these sections:

• • Introduction: Why did you choose this country?
  • Places to Visit: Name three places and explain why.
  • Comparison/Contrast: Compare the country with your own by focusing on some key elements (e.g., climate, culture, and shopping).
  • Budget and Challenges: Estimate costs and note possible travel challenges.

Step 3: Peer Review

Students are assigned to review reports anonymously. Each reviewer writes one to three comments on each the four sections of the report by focusing on strength of reasons, organization, and language use.

Step 4: Reflection

After receiving the report back from the reviewer, each student writes a reflection (two paragraphs; 300 words) by responding to the reviewer’s specific comments and deciding whether any revisions should be made to their travel plan.

Step 5: Submission

Students submit the initial report, peer review, and their reflections for assessment.

Skills Integrated: This task integrates reading, writing, critical thinking, and peer assessment—all essential for communicative competence.

Weighting: Reading: 40%, Writing: 60%

Final Thoughts

Integrated assessment can do more than just testing language accuracy; it can prime learners for real-life communication (e.g., assessment for learning). Also, by combining reading and writing in purposeful and authentic tasks, we help learners experience assessment as a contextualized activity. An important aspect of integrated assessment tasks is that they can also provide opportunities for the use of both critical and creative thinking skills.