The surge in international students studying abroad in English-speaking countries in recent years has made it increasingly important to develop adequate assessments of their language abilities. Prior research has led to a debate regarding listening assessment tasks and whether visual support should be provided to test takers in these tasks, and much of this previous research has predominantly investigated the effects of visual support on multiple choice listening comprehension tasks. The present study seeks to expand on this research by investigating the effects of video listening passages on integrated writing task performance and note-taking strategies. 40 international students at Michigan State University participated in the current study. Each participant wrote essays for two integrated writing tasks, one task was presented with video listening material and one task was presented with audio listening material. Participants also completed an exit survey concerning their perceptions of the video and audio tasks. Results indicated that there was no significant difference in performance on the integrated writing task between the audio and video conditions; however, there was a significant difference in word count in participants' notes. Qualitative data suggested that there were mixed perceptions of the usefulness of video among test takers. However, the majority of participants preferred the video condition and believed that video mediated listening passages aided in comprehension of information presented in the listening passages.
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