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In this study, the cloze-elide test was developed and administered under time constraints. This research is aimed to examine the validity and reliability of the speeded cloze-elide test and investigate its relationship with reading comprehension, C-Test, and multiple-choice cloze test. Processing speed is a vital indicator to distinguish high to low levels of language proficiency. The obtained test scores of the test takers' performance in the restricted time reveal their level of overall language proficiency. One-hundred fifty Iranian undergraduate English students were selected to participate in this study. A reading comprehension test, C-tests, multiple-choice cloze tests and speeded cloze-elide tests were presented to the students. The Cronbach's alpha reliability revealed that speeded cloze-elide test is highly reliable. Moreover, the principal component analysis resulted in the presence of one component which supports the unidimensionality of the data. The findings also illustrated that the C-Test is a slightly better measure of reading comprehension than multiple-choice cloze test and speeded cloze-elide test. Based on the analysis of data, time limitations increase the test validity and test reliability on the cloze-elide test.

This study investigates the effects of cognacy on vocabulary learning. The research expands on earlier designs by measuring learning of English–Japanese cognates with both decontextualized and contextualized tests, scoring responses at two levels of sensitivity, and examining learning in a more ecologically valid setting. The results indicated that Japanese learners could successfully recall the L2 forms of more cognates than noncognates, supporting earlier findings. However, when scoring was sensitive to partial knowledge of written form, the results indicated that greater knowledge of noncognates was gained. Because there was greater potential for learning noncognates due to the higher pretest scores for cognates, relative gains were also examined. The relative gains were greater for cognates than noncognates on a form recall test. The results of a cloze test contrasted with those of the form recall test. Gains were significantly larger for noncognates than cognates immediately after the treatment although no statistically significant difference existed 1 week after learning. Taken together, the research indicates that although the L2 forms of cognates may be more easily learned, it may be more challenging for second language learners to use cognates than noncognates, at least shortly after learning.

A commonly held view is that cloze tests may well provide a quick measure of something reading related, but that they are not suitable for assessments of understanding of ideas beyond the sentence boundary. The present article presents challenges to this view. It is argued that word gaps can be carefully selected so that filling them in requires proper understanding of the ideas of the text. The reliability and validity of such a comprehension-focused cloze test was demonstrated in a study of 204 Danish adults attending reading courses or general education. The quick (10 min) cloze comprehension test correlated strongly ( r = .84) with a standard (30 min) question-answering comprehension test. Only a small part of this correlation was accounted for by decoding ability or vocabulary. The cloze test was somewhat more sensitive to decoding ability than the question-answering comprehension test was, and it provided a better fit to the participants’ self-reported reading difficulties.

The ‘cloze’ test is one possible investigative instrument for predicting text comprehensibility. Conceptual coding of student replacement of deleted words has been considered to be more valid than exact coding, partly because conceptual coding seemed fairer to poorer readers. This paper reports a quantitative study of 447 Australian secondary school student responses to three differing cloze tests covering identical content. The study sought to better understand the impact of cloze coding decisions on estimation of text difficulty and/or reader competence. Findings reveal the following: (a) conceptual coding increases reader cloze score differentially; (b) the increase in score from conceptual coding is greater for more able readers; (c) conceptual coding differentially advantages more able readers of less difficult text. This study is significant because instructors, researchers and developers often make decisions based on interpretation of mean scores from grouped cloze test results and such summaries of result distributions can obscure differential advantages such as those made clearer by this study. Estimates of text comprehensibility based on mean scores of conceptually coded cloze tests may overestimate group competence and underestimate text difficulty for some groups of readers. This contradicts an apparent consensus in the literature dealing with deletion-based tests.

Testing consists of making a generalization about a population on the basis of what can be observed in a sample. This principle underlies not only the composition of the sample of individuals to be tested but also the selection of content for the testing instrument itself. Careful attention to the content of assessment tasks is needed to ensure that they are representative of the domain of tasks about which generalizations are to be drawn. However, content representativeness extends beyond mere attention to the problems posed and materials provided in the test. What is more crucially important is the manner in which test tasks are performed. Attention to test-taking process is especially crucial and problematic in the testing of cognitive processing skills. The sample will only be representative if the cogni tive processes involved in task performance are representative of those involved in performance of the domain of tasks in the real world. Thus the validation of tests involving cognitive processes will not be complete unless it includes some examination of the processes by which solutions to test tasks are reached. This line of thinking was propounded 40 years ago by Lennon but has only recently been taken up with the application of ethnographic methods to the study of the test-taking process. This article looks at the findings of a study of the processes employed by sub jects engaged in a discourse cloze test. Think-aloud protocols obtained from test- takers give indications of the reasoning employed in selecting items to complete gaps in the cloze passage and of the strategies employed in doing so. From these indications, cognitive processes are inferred. Comparing observed behaviours and inferred processes with those predicted in a model of ideal performance gives a measure of the construct validity both of the items and of the discourse cloze procedure in general. This introspective validation procedure reveals the test-tak ing behaviour of subjects engaged in cloze tasks and provides a cognitive perspec tive on the vexed question of what cloze actually measures.

This article proposes a text-driven method for the deletion procedure in cloze passages. Contrary to the previous methods, the deletion rate suggested in this study is based on the number of the linguistic and discourse structures of a passage. After determining the proficiency level of the subjects, a passage of appropriate length and difficulty with the deletion rate of 7 was developed. Along with this standard cloze, eight different versions were also constructed. The deletion rate of the eight versions was based on the number of linguistic and discourse clues. Following a counterbalanced design, the cloze test forms were administered to 403 subjects majoring in English at different academic levels. The results sug gested that the text-driven method is superior to the fixed-ratio deletion method on some grounds. It was also revealed that the differences among the subjects' performance on different versions of cloze tests were significant. It is concluded that the random deletion method may lead to a paradox between the difficulty and the reliability of cloze tests.

The purpose of this study was to determine 1) the readability of a patient package insert (PPI), and 2) the effect of age and schooling on the cloze test scores. The subjects (N = 75) consisted of female patients visiting family planning clinics in two midwestern communities. Each subject completed a 50-item cloze test. Raw cloze scores were converted to percentage of correct completions. Personal data supplied by each subject consisted of age and years of schooling. The mean cloze score for the PPI was 46.85 percent (instructional level) with no significant difference between the two communities. Forty percent of the subjects tested at the frustrational level, 33 percent at the instructional level, and only 27 percent at the independent level. Three out of four patients will need assistance in comprehending information in the PPI. Age and schooling had a significant ( p = .01) effect on the cloze test scores.

This study reports an experiment conducted on 110 ESL university students comparing a standardized traditional reading test with a multiple-choice cloze test and a short-context test with a criterion of teacher ratings as measures of growth in reading ability. Results indi cate no evidence that the cloze test or the short-context test performed in a superior manner to the traditional test. Questions are raised as to the nature of growth in reading skills and also as to the validity of the cloze procedure as a measure of across-time gains in reading and of reading proficiency.

To assess gender differences in performance in three graduate level courses in educational statistics, responses from students to a question concerning gender, mathematics pre- and posttests, cloze pre- and posttests, and final exams in statistics were analyzed. Males performed slightly better on the mathematics pretest. When gender and mathematics and cloze pretests were used in multiple regression analyses to predict final examination performance, gender was not a significant predictor for any course. However, the interaction between gender and cloze pretest performance was significant for the Ph.D. level course on multiple regression. Mathematics pretest performance was the primary predictor for performance in the Master's level statistics course; both cloze test and mathematics test performance influenced scores on posttest measure in the Ph.D. level courses. Apparently the influence of entering mathematics ability, comprehension of statistical terminology, and gender varies by the primary emphasis of the course taken. While mathematical ability is most important in basic statistics, it is less important in higher level courses in which an adequate mathematics background is assumed by instructors. In consequence, the importance of comprehension of concepts increases from the Master's level to the advanced Ph.D. level in the educational statistics courses analyzed in this study.

This study investigates the possibility that the reliability and validity of a cloze procedure can be improved by applying traditional item analysis and selection techniques. Students in a single level (n = 89) at the Guangzhou English Language Centre (People's Republic of China) were chosen for this study because previous experience and research had indicated that cloze tests gene rally produce low reliability and validity coefficients in samples wherein the range of ESL proficiencies is limited. This turned out to be the case when a 399-word every seventh word deletion cloze passage with 50 items was administered to this group. The study was designed such that 250 of the poten tial items in this passage could be piloted and item analyzed. The results of the item analysis were used to select the 'best' items on the basis of item facility and discrimination indices. The resulting 50 item 'tailored cloze' was then read ministered to the same group and the results for the original version of the cloze test were compared to those for the tailored version. These results indicate statistically significant and meaningful improvements in test quality due to the revision. The dispersion of scores, reliability and validity were all substantially improved by the item analysis and selection processes. The article concludes with discussion of the implications of these findings.

The author takes up the suggestion made by Johnson (1981) that some of the assumptions made about cloze tests may be mis leading. Research which has now been going for thirty years indicates that cloze procedure is a criterion-referenced test which will identify whether an individual or a group possesses the basic skills in the target language. Cloze is a very blunt instrument for testing but within its limits it is valid and reliable. However, changing the variables such as deletion rate, scoring procedure or using a different text may well result in a radically different test each time. The raw data obtained from a cloze test cannot be used as continuous data, such as would be derived from most psychometric-type tests, but as an indicator of one of three levels: frustrational, instructional and independent. Finally, guidelines are given for the preparation of a cloze test.

The link between oral reading responses and comprehension performance bears strengthening and promises new insights into the reading process and new tools for interpreting reading performance. In a cloze test, the subject faces a passage with blanks substituted for words in some fashion. The subject is asked to write the word that fits best in the blank (Wilson Taylor, 1953). When a blank is substituted for every fifth word, the cloze test is an indicator of literal comprehension as measured by multiple choice comprehension tests (John Bormuth, 1969, p. 365). A conventional cloze test is administered without prior contact of the subject with the passage. A post oral reading cloze test is administered immediately following an oral reading of the passage by the subject. This study investigates the relationship between performance on a conventional cloze test and performance on a post oral reading cloze test. Three questions center on the relationship between conventional cloze test performance and post oral reading cloze test performance. 1) Can conventional cloze test scores be predicted from post oral reading cloze test scores? 2) Is the relationship strong enough to warrant use of the post oral reading cloze test as comprehension criteria in oral reading research? 3) Is the relationship strong enough to warrant use of the post oral reading cloze test as a measure of comprehension in reading diagnosis? These questions guide the study.

Ability to vary one's style is an important skill of mature writing, and it would be useful to have tests of this skill. We developed a cloze test to measure writing flexibility, then asked college students (all good writers) to replace sentences that had been deleted from two short stories. The style of the cloze sentences, for students with experience in creative writing, more closely resembled the original story than the cloze sentences of less experienced students. Style differences, between experienced and inexperienced students, appeared in average sentence lengths, sentence types, and verb-adjective ratios. In another experiment, less experienced students were given explicit instructions to imitate story style; they showed virtually the same adaptability to style as the creative writing group in the first experiment. Thus we have evidence that the cloze test measures style differences between experienced and less experienced writers, and also that responsiveness to style features, distinct from the skill needed to change those features, is a significant component of experienced writing.

No studies have investigated whether the writing of certain transformations can predict comprehension of prose written in them. In studying this possibility, 90 subjects, 30 from each grade level, were asked to read three major prose forms, each written in three transformed versions, and to respond to each immediately on Cloze tests. Every subject also rewrote a simple sentence paragraph using his own sentence combining techniques. The Cloze test scores were then compared to sentence-lengthening criteria in a multiple regression analysis. Cloze tests did not satisfactorily predict sentence length. Yet there was strong evidence to suggest that Cloze tests are less valid measures of advanced reading comprehension and that the higher Cloze scores predicted lower sentence-lengthening criteria.

Most cloze testing research has centered on the traditional model of deleting every-nth word, accepting only exact word replacements in scoring, and providing blanks of standard length. In the present study, alternative cloze forms derived from selected deletion strategies (every-5th versus total random), scoring procedures (verbatim versus synonymic), and blank conditions (standard versus cued) were analyzed for respective effects on the cloze test performance of 80 college-level readers. Increased performance was generally observed across the every-5th, cued, and synonymic levels of the independent variables. Of the eight alternative cloze formats examined, the total random/cued/verbatim condition generated mean scores most similar to the traditional model while averting, in theory, the sampling biases that can accompany approximated deletions. In this format, context distances of less than four were as effective in producing correct responses as context distances of four, the equivalent of an every-5th word deletion pattern. High positive correlations were found to exist between verbatim and synonymic scoring systems in total, and for each of four individual cloze formats.

This study begins to address the question of cloze test construct validity through causal modelling. It investigates the underlying factor structure of L2 cloze test performance as explained by a theoretical model including the following hypothetical constructs: cloze-taking ability; knowledge of language; content domain; and knowledge of contextual constraints. Eight cloze tests reflecting the posited factors were constructed and administered to 182 Francophone, university-level students. The factors were examined separately and in combination through a model building process which included model fitting and model comparison. A model composed of three orthogonal factors was confirmed and accepted as the best explanation of the data. The results indicate that cloze performance is dependent upon language factors (a second language factor or a first language factor) and nonlinguistic specific knowledge related to cloze-taking ability that crosses over linguistic boundaries. Cloze has been considered as an overall L2 proficiency measure. This study empirically demonstrates that factors other than language are significantly contributing to cloze test performance. It also demonstrates the potential of a causal modelling approach.

The newly developed reading-storage (RS) type of test was evaluated by comparing it to a modified version of the cloze test in three experiments involving 48 college students reading passages at four levels of difficulty. The experiments involved the following conditions: reading versus non-reading of passages, varying degrees of passage deletion, and varying amounts of interpolated activity between passages and tests. The RS test seemed to be more reliable and equally valid as the cloze test in measuring gain in understanding during reading. The RS type of test appears to offer a better objective technique for measuring the primary effect of reading.

This is a study of the effect upon reading comprehension of reading variation (silent reading, reporting the last word of each sentence read aloud, and reading aloud) and punctuation condition (all of the reading passage punctuated, or none of the reading passage punctuated). Reading comprehension was measured by a) a noun cloze test; b) the sum of individual test item latencies; c) the total required to read the stimulus passage; and d) the total time required to take the oral test.

A machine-scorab le multiple-choi ce cloze test based on college textbooks was administered to 100 sophomores who also took the Cooperative Reading Test, C-2, Form R. Validity coefficients of a long and a short form of the cloze test indicated about 26% of common variance with the comprehension section of the Cooperative Reading Test. Kuder-Richardson-20 reliability coefficients were .88 and .86 on the cloze test. A similar cloze test, but without the multiple-choice format, was constructed and shortened from 300 to 135 items. Elimination of the less effective items diminished both the reliability coefficient from .93 to .83 and the validity coefficient from .52 to .51. Further study of item selection procedures and cross validation was recommended. Since its introduction in 1953, the cloze technique has been used extensively for a number of reading and measurement purposes. One of these purposes is to measure reading comprehension. Traditional reading tests have been criticized because comprehension items are difficult to construct and may misrepresent the author's meaning. Cloze tests in both respects seem to offer an improved method of measuring reading comprehension. Two problems associated with the cloze technique relate to the purpose of the study. The first is the necessity that each cloze response be individually inspected and handscored. The mechanics of scoring very likely have restricted the use of cloze tests. For this reason, most cloze tests described in the literature (Rankin, 1959, 1964, 1965; Greene, 1965; Bickley, Ellington and Bickley, 1970) have fewer than 60 items. A second problem relates to the lack of research investigating the use of item-analysis techniques with the cloze testing procedure. Traditionally test validity and reliability have been improved by eliminating less effective test items. At the time of this research, only one study (Greene, 1964) could be located in which the functioning of individual cloze items was investigated through item analysis procedures. The purpose of the study related to two questions: (1) Is it possible to construct a reliable and valid cloze test that could be machine scored and still retain the essential elements of th? cloze procedure? and (2) Could * Dr. Cranney is Director of the Reading and Study Skilis Center and on the faculty of the College of Education at the University of Florida.

Here is the first comprehensive statement of a research method and its theory which were introduced briefly during a workshop at the 1953 AEJ convention. Included are findings from three pilot studies and two experiments in which “cloze procedure” results are compared with those of two readability formulas.

Two experiments that evaluate the effectiveness of the cloze test as a method for detecting plagiarism are reported. The first experiment employed student essays on the same topic, and required subjects to fill in missing words from either their own or another student's work. The second study repeated this design, but using a “plagiarized” essay on a new topic that had not been studied by the subjects. In both studies, cloze performance was significantly better in “nonplagiarizing” than “plagiarizing” situations. Used with due caution, the cloze test appears to be potentially helpful in detecting plagiarism.

64 college students participated in a study to examine the intercorrelationships of reading and writing measures which included The Nelson-Denny Reading Test, Form E, a randomly deleted cloze test, and the Test of Standard Written English. The latter correlated highly with the cloze and The Nelson-Denny tests, each contributing about an equal amount of common variance. The common variance between The Nelson-Denny and cloze was substantially less, so it was concluded that research at the college level should utilize both cloze and standardized reading tests to investigate the effect of sentence-combining on reading comprehension.