TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT OF ENGLISH LISTENING-TO-WRITING IN UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL: PEDAGOGICAL ADVANTAGES AND CHALLENGES

Abstract

As a life-long skill, writing plays a crucial role in post-secondary education and career. The nature and instruction of writing, however, have considerably changed over the last decade by shifting the focus onto integrated or source-based writing. On the one hand, combining writing and other skills – listening, for instance – enhances both skills; on the other hand, practicing writing together with listening develops critical thinking and rhetoric in learners. With its emphasis on knowledge transformation instead of knowledge transmission, source-based writing has captured the attention of researchers and language trainers in many educational settings, including secondary school. In the Ukrainian context, source-based writing in L2 education has been neglected on both theoretical and practical levels; as a result, it is excluded from most tertiary and secondary school writing courses as well as assessment. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to consider cognitive characteristics as well as pedagogical advantages and challenges of integrated listening and writing in an English classroom at upper secondary school. The research has revealed pedagogical values of integrated writing which include improved task authenticity, fair assessment, and the fact that integrated writing is not affected by the topic effect. The challenges are related to cognitive complexity of the integrated writing process and difficulties in interpreting the scores in the assessment process. The paper concludes that despite challenges, integrated listening and writing possesses strong pedagogical values as it enhances learners’ literacy, rhetoric as well as critical and creative thinking