Integrated Skills
Integrated items combine reading or listening with writing. Typical shapes include reading a passage and writing a sentence about it, comparing a notice with an email, taking notes from a recording and completing a written answer, or finishing a summary. You must find the right information and then express it in your own short sentence.
Procedure
- Underline the task conditions: "in English", "one sentence", "use the word ~", "from the passage".
- Find the source sentence and mark its verb.
- Rebuild it short: keep subject and verb, drop extra clauses.
- Check the answer against the question and the word limit before moving on.
Worked example
Passage: "Last year Yuki noticed that many plastic bottles were left in the gym. She asked her teacher for a box and put a sign on it. In three months the school was sending 2,000 bottles a month to be recycled." Task: "Write one English sentence about what Yuki did first to solve the problem." Model: "She asked her teacher for a box." Reasoning: "noticed" describes what she saw, not an action she took, so the first step she chose is asking the teacher. One action only keeps it inside the one-sentence limit; adding the sign would make it two actions and go beyond the task.
Traps
- Copying a long sentence and breaking the word limit.
- Writing in Japanese when the condition says English.
- Getting the order of events wrong - first, then, after that.
- Leaving out the required given word.
- Mixing facts from two different texts in a comparison task.