| Summary: | There is a growing number of ESL learners taking writing examinations to enter
English universities every year. The purpose of these writing tests is to measure general
writing competence rather than content knowledge. To address this purpose, some tests
offer ESL students multiple topics to choose from while others include only one topic. To
date, research on the effects of topics on student writing has been primarily focused on
performance, but no hard evidence has been provided in support of one test condition over
the other. Moreover, there is less research investigating the process of writing under the
two testing conditions. Research on the writing process in a timed-test condition is an
important area because it can provide background information about how ESL students
reach certain scores.
The present study used a qualitative approach with 22 ESL students to explore how
they chose and/ or wrote under multiple topic versus single topic test conditions and how
they felt about each test condition. Video tapes of the testing sessions and transcripts of the
participants' interviews were analyzed to address the research questions, which focused on
exploring the time needed for prewriting, the topic selection process, the criteria for topic
choice, and attitudes toward each test condition. The findings suggest that while most
participants spent more time prewriting for the multiple topic test, they did not consider this
a waste of time. They believed that their use of time was productive in that it allowed them
to take a great leap forward. Under the multiple topic test condition, the ESL students
appeared to read all the topics before choosing. Topic familiarity was the most popular
criterion they referred to in making a choice. The majority of the ESL students in this study
stated that they preferred to have options in a real test situation. These results suggest that
offering options in a timed-test situation may help many ESL learners feel more
comfortable about taking a writing test, and this comfort may in turn help them display a
good representation of their general writing ability. === Education, Faculty of === Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of === Graduate
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