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This study investigated the effects of teaching English prepositions using schematic diagrams inspired by cognitive linguistics in a computer-based tutorial system called the English Preposition Tutor. Training was designed based on the theoretical framework of the Competition Model and a cognitive linguistic analysis of prepositions. Sixty-four Cantonese-speaking intermediate learners of English were trained using a sentence–picture matching task. They received one of the three types of feedback: schematic diagram feedback, metalinguistic rule feedback, or correctness feedback. Only the schematic diagram feedback group was exposed to chaining between spatial senses and nonspatial senses. Results showed that instruction was effective in all three feedback groups, as measured by a cloze test and a translation test. In the translation test, the group receiving schematic diagram feedback outperformed the correctness feedback group. The effects of the three feedback conditions were not significantly different in the cloze test.

This article analyzes the instructed learning of the English article system by second language (L2) learners. The Competition Model (MacWhinney, 1987, 2012) was adopted as the theoretical framework for analyzing the cues to article usage and for designing effective computer‐based article instruction. Study 1 found that article cues followed a Zipfian distribution for availability or frequency and that the cues had overall high reliabilities. Study 2 assessed the initial level of cue reliance in a group of intermediate–advanced L2 learners. As expected, the input variables of cue availability and cue reliability clearly influenced both the accuracy of learners’ choices in a cloze test format and the subjects’ response times. Study 3 demonstrated that the form–function mappings relevant for native‐like article choice can be taught in two 1‐hour sessions using the strategy of cue focusing. The type of explicit instruction (analogical, i.e., by giving analogous examples without metalinguistic comments, vs. metalinguistic feedback) had an additional effect on response time, while both instruction types led to a similar increase in accuracy. These findings are novel and are highly relevant to both theory and pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Text simplification often relies on dated, unproven readability formulas. As an alternative and motivated by the success of term familiarity, we test a complementary measure: grammar familiarity. Grammar familiarity is measured as the frequency of the 3rd level sentence parse tree and is useful for evaluating individual sentences. We created a database of 140K unique 3rd level parse structures by parsing and binning all 5.4M sentences in English Wikipedia. We then calculated the grammar frequencies across the corpus and created 11 frequency bins. We evaluate the measure with a user study and corpus analysis. For the user study, we selected 20 sentences randomly from each bin, controlling for sentence length and term frequency, and recruited 30 readers per sentence N = 6,600 on Amazon Mechanical Turk. We measured actual difficulty comprehension using a Cloze test, perceived difficulty using a 5-point Likert scale, and time taken. Sentences with more frequent grammatical structures, even with very different surface presentations, were easier to understand, perceived as easier, and took less time to read. Outcomes from readability formulas correlated with perceived but not with actual difficulty. Our corpus analysis shows how the metric can be used to understand grammar regularity in a broad range of corpora.

This study investigated the elicited imitation task (EIT) as a tool for measuring linguistic proficiency in a second/foreign (L2) language, focusing on French. Nonnative French speakers (n = 94) and native French speakers (n = 6) completed an EIT that included 50 sentences varying in length and complexity. Three raters evaluated productions on five scales: meaning, syntax, morphology, vocabulary, and pronunciation. Participants also completed a cloze test and a language background questionnaire. Results from regression and principal component analyses showed a strong relationship between EIT performance and cloze test scores and significant relationships between EIT performance, sentence length, and learners’ knowledge of and experience with French. Ratings were internally consistent, and all test items discriminated well between lower- and higher-level learners. We argue that this EIT exhibits good validity and reliability, discriminates among French learners of different proficiencies, and is a practical tool for L2 proficiency assessment.

This study examined the extent to which 40 students enrolled in upper level foreign language literary/cultural studies content courses showed evidence of incidental language learning over the course of a semester. Students completed a cloze passage and provided both writing and speaking samples at the beginning and end of the semester. In addition, they completed questionnaires related to their goals and perceived development, and instructors were interviewed and observed at various intervals throughout the semester. Instructors' focus was primarily on the content; focus on language was secondary and dealt with incidentally. Some positive evidence of language learning was found, but was mostly limited to students' writing. Speaking abilities, on the other hand, showed little evidence of significant improvement, and global proficiency, as measured by the cloze test, improved in some cases but not in others. Thus, there is some evidence for incidental language learning, but the question remains whether more could have been accomplished. It is suggested that an approach that more intentionally integrates content and language may meet the needs of a greater number of learners and maximize the potential for more language development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent investigations challenge the construct validity of sustained silent reading tests. Performance of two groups of post-secondary students (e.g. struggling and non-struggling) on a sustained silent reading test and two types of cloze test (i.e. maze and open-ended) was compared in order to identify the test format that contributes greater variance in reading comprehension. One hundred participants were recruited from students enrolled in a preparatory course for a high-stakes statewide reading examination. Our results suggest that all three measures have good concurrent validity. There was no evidence that open-ended cloze performance was more related to verbal ability than any other reading measure. Maze performance did the best job at discriminating between our struggling and non-struggling readers. Implications for reading comprehension assessment in post secondary-aged adults are discussed.

Background. Within the context of students’ self-regulated learning, the interpla y between learners’ individual characteristics and the context of testing have been emphasized for assessing learning outcomes. Aims. The present study examined metacognitiv em onitoring and control processes in elementar ys choolchildren’ st est taking behaviour and explore dt he impacts of these metacognitiv es kills for the accuracy and the quantity of test performance. Sample and methods. At otal of 133 participants from third and fifth grade did a cloze test about ap reviously learned science topic ,g av ec onfidence judgments for ever y answer, and wer et hen allowed to cross-out answers if they wished. Tw od ifferent mock scoring schemes for test performance wer ec ompare dw ith ac ontrol group. Results. Results revealed well-developed monitoring skills indicating that by the age of 9c hildren can reliably distinguish between correct and incorrect answers. As for control skills, 11- and 12-year-olds proved to be better able to improve their test performance by selectivel yw ithdrawing answers that would have been incorrect than the 9- to 10-year-olds. Conclusions. The study offers evidence for the impact of metacognitive processes in students’ learning outcomes and documents strategic behaviour during test taking, as wel la sd evelopmental progression in the involved skills.

This study examined the effects of item characteristics on cloze test performance. A particular focus of the study was to investigate the relationship between a number of cloze item characteristics and scoring methods. The item characteristics examined were: (a) content/function words, (b) parts of speech, (c) word frequency, (d) the number of occurrences of a word in the text, (e) alternative answers, (f) syntactic variation, (g) the amount of context, and (h) knowledge base. A total of 255 Japanese university students participated and were randomly assigned 1 of 4 sets of cloze tests. The data revealed variations in the results of cloze tests attributable to different scoring methods. The study showed the complex effects of item characteristics and scoring methods on test performance, both in terms of item difficulty and discrimination. These findings have important implications for the use of cloze tests.

This article reports on a study investigating the role in second language (L2) learning of ethnocentrism, cultural and personality traits, and acceptance of values and beliefs expressed in myths and proverbs. Although scholars have conjectured that these factors may play an important role in L2 proficiency, there has been very little empirical investigation of this issue. In our study, 108 adult Japanese living in North America were asked how much they agreed with or accepted statements expressing ethnocentric views about Japanese culture and language that described their shyness, inwardness, and groupist tendencies and that indicated certain Japanese values and beliefs as expressed through myths and proverbs. Three sets of variables were tested: (a) participants’ ethnocentrism, (b) willingness to acknowledge certain cultural traits as being characteristic of Japanese as a group, and (c) willingness to accept the validity of Japanese-oriented myths and proverbs. The participants’ responses on these variables were correlated with their levels of English proficiency as measured by a cloze test, a self-rated ability sacle, and a self-rated performance scale. It was hypothesized that the higher the participants’ responses on these variables, the lower their proficiency levels in English would be. Results suggest that these cultural traits and beliefs play a role in L2 learning but provide little evidence for an effect of ethnocentrism as the term is commonly defined.

Students’ approaches to vocabulary learning were surveyed in two distinct learning environments: one where English was studied as a second language (ESL), and another where it was a foreign language (EFL). A questionnaire, adapted from Sanaoui's (1992) work, was administered to 47 ESL and 43 EFL students. They were asked to indicate, among other things, the amount of time they usually spent on vocabulary learning, the extent to which they engaged in independent language study, the type of vocabulary learning activities they did on a regular basis, the frequency and elaborateness of their note-taking and reviewing efforts, and the frequency and elaborateness with which they used dictionaries. Whereas students in the two settings exhibited significant differences in the use of some of the strategies, other parts of their strategic behaviour were strikingly similar. Cluster analysis, a technique used for finding relatively homogeneous subgroups in a population, identified 8 different profiles of student approaches to lexical learning. Some clusters exhibited a remarkably “flat” profile in that they used either all or none of the strategies. The majority of learners, however, fell into the more saw-toothed profile clusters, exhibiting clear preferences for certain types of strategic behaviour. Analyses were also conducted to determine a possible relationship between strategy use and achievement level. Students’ performance on two tests, a Yes/No test assessing knowledge of academic vocabulary and a cloze test assessing overall English proficiency, were compared for the clusters. More frequent and elaborate strategy use was associated with higher levels of achievement, whereas lack of self-reported effort on the students' part was linked to poor performance. Results also suggested thattimeand learnerindependencewere the two measures most closely related to success in vocabulary learning and higher overall English proficiency.

Attention to form has been shown to be a direct predictor of accuracy in second language (L2) production (Ellis, 1987; Tomlin & Villa, 1994). However, Tarone and Parrish (1988) claim that communicative pressure (communicative demands of linguistic interaction) may be as important as attention to form. The present study analyzes the accuracy of L2 Spanish production across 3 different tasks (narrative task, multiple-choice cloze test, and fill-in-the-blanks cloze test) on 3 discourse-determined grammatical items (subject pronouns, articles, and past tense aspect) among 74 native (L1) English speakers (45 intermediate and 29 advanced students). The analysis of the data reveals different rates of accuracy in L2 production according to task type and grammatical item. The effect of functional focus on form (communicative pressure) may constitute one of various factors that affect accuracy in L2 production. The analysis of the data also considers other factors such as communicative control.

Fourteen abstracts, taken from a recent issue of the British Journal of Educational Psychology, were printed in four different versions. Version 1 was the original format. Version 2 matched Version 1, but its type-size was increased to that of the corresponding article. Version 3 matched Version 2, but paragraphs were introduced to clarify the underlying structure. Version 4 matched Version 3, but the text of the abstract was rewritten in an attempt to clarify the text even further. The effects of these changes were assessed in four ways. Firstly, undergraduates each ranked for clarity Versions 1–4 of individual abstracts. The results showed that each change in design lead to a significantly greater preference - thus Version 1 was the least preferred and Version 4 the most preferred. Secondly, Flesch readability scores were computed for the original and the revised abstracts. It was shown using this measure that the revised abstracts were significantly easier to read than the originals. Thirdly, academic staff and postgraduates completed cloze (comprehension) tests on original and revised versions of two of the original abstracts. The results showed (i) significantly higher cloze test scores for the revised versions, and (ii) that experienced staff and postgraduates performed significantly better on both versions than did beginning postgraduate students. Finally British and overseas postgraduate students of librarianship completed a cloze version of an original and its revised abstract. The results showed that the British students did significantly better than overseas ones, and that both groups scored significantly higher on the revised abstract. These four sets of data thus indicate that it is possible to improve the clarity of journal abstracts, and that this can be achieved for many different kinds of reader.

of second language proficiency even though the precise abilities required by a given cloze remain in question. The practice of using cloze tests without clear knowledge of what they measure is inconsistent with current objectives of educational measurement: we must know precisely what a test measures for reasons both theoretical (to understand the abilities it requires) and practical (to use appropriately the scores it yields). One means of defining these abilities is to identify the factors affecting test difficulty at the item level (15: p. 153). Applying this principle to students' performance on cloze items, we attempted in this study to understand what cloze tests measure by identifying factors related to cloze item difficulty. Our purpose was to help explain the meaning of cloze test scores and thus provide a firmer basis for developing various types of cloze tests.

Cloze tests have been the focus of considerable interest in recent years as easily constructed and scored measures of integrative proficiency. Although there has been debate as to whether all forms produced by the cloze procedure are equally reliable and valid, as well as controversy over what is actually measured, the balance of evidence favors a positive view of the cloze test as an effective testing instrument. These implications are especially significant in the EFL situation in which many English teachers are nonnative speakers who want to include an integrative measure of EFL proficiency within the English portion of their college entrance examinations. The study reported here presents the necessary steps in the development of a reliable and valid cloze test and uses the form produced to measure EFL proficiency in two groups of Japanese college students, English majors and nonmajors. Cloze test performance is correlated with essay scores and TOEFL scores to determine whether the cloze test can function as an alternative measure of integrative language ability. Issues regarding construct and predictive validity are addressed, and it is suggested that well-designed cloze tests are capable of assessing language skills ranging from basic to advanced. Use of cloze tests in their fixed-ratio deletion, exact-word scored format is recommended, with certain limiting considerations, as a substitute for essay tests on English proficiency examinations.

This article presents the findings of an experiment aimed at determining the number of blanks minimally required to ensure parallelism for cloze tests differing only in the point at which deletion starts. Two 200-item cloze tests were constructed, both based on the same Dutch text and differing only in that, in the their second halves, deletion in one version lagged one word behind those in the other. The two versions were administered to two groups of 38 and 36 Indonesian learners of Dutch. Analysis of their scores on various subsets of 100, 75, and 50 items revealed that the required minimum depends upon the scoringmethod used. With the exact-word method, tests should contain a minimum of about 100 blanks; with the acceptable-word method, a minimum of about 75 blanks will suffice. With tests containing only 50 blanks–the number generally held to be sufficient–parallelism was found to be a matter of pure chance. In an additional experiment, the tests involved were shown to satisfy a major requirement for th e validity of any L2 proficiency tests: administration to two groups of 20 and 19 native speakers of Dutch resulted in high scores, with mean acceptable responses of 190 or more for a total of 200 items.

The validity of a traditional language proficiency test, Language Assessment Scales, and an integrated test, the cloze text, in measuring academic language proficiency was assessed. The Language Assessment Scales and two written cloze passages were administered to 28 Mexican-American third graders enrolled in bilingual education classes and compared to their performance on the California Test of Basic Skills. Results indicate that correlations between the Language Assessment Scales and the California Test of Basic Skills, and the Language Assessment Scales and the cloze test are nonsignificant, whereas the cloze test correlates significantly with all subtests of the California Test of Basic Skills. An error analysis for cloze responses reveals subjects make proportionately fewer errors in using syntactic cues as their total errors decrease. Implications for the use of the cloze test in assessing academic language proficiency, the existence of an academic language threshold, exit criteria from bilingual programs, and the need for continued language development are discussed.

ditional methods of testing second or foreign language proficiency has increased. Since the middle of the sixties, discrete-point testing has increasingly been considered too limited an approach to the evaluation of language proficiency. Current interest in more global or integrative tests is demonstrated in the literature of testing. 1 The CLOZE test is one procedure which is claimed to test global language proficiency. This paper examines two different methods of generating and scoring CLOZE tests in German at the university level, determines which of these combinations may be most useful in testing German at this level, and evaluates the contribution of researcher-determined logical factors (exclusively grammar, primarily grammar, primarily text, grammar and text equally represented, and grammar, text, and context equally represented) to student performance in the selection of items to fill CLOZE test slots.

This study analyzes the relationship between English language attainment and attitudes towards English among Chinese-speaking (Canton dialect) secondary school students in Hong Kong. The subjects were Form IV (10th grade) students from both English-medium and Chinese-medium schools. Attitude measures were obtained by use of both direct and indirect means. Attitudes towards English were measured directly by means of a series of statements concerning the study and use of English to which subjects were asked to respond on five-point scales. Indirectly, attitudes were measured with a scale of stereotypes modelled on the work of Spolsky. English attainment was assessed by a cloze procedure as suggested by Oller. Results of factor analysis of the direct attitude questions regarding English show that several of these attitude factors are significantly related to English attainment as measured by the cloze test. In some cases, however, the correlations were contrary to the directions that one might expect. In general, the statistical results of this study indicate that, for the population under study, the direct measure of attitude was a better predictor of English attainment than an indirect measure. The indirect measures obtained by asking Ss to rate (1) themselves, (2) themselves as they would like to be, (3) Chinese people, and (4) Westerners did produce some significant results, but these were not as strong indicators of language attainment as the results obtained from the direct measures.

A frequent assumption of proficiency tests for nonnative speakers of a language is that they measure something that native speakers are able to do uniformly well. The cloze procedure is increasingly used to construct proficiency tests for administration to nonnative speakers of English. However, little evidence is available on the question of whether cloze tests are capable of making fine distinctions between native and nonnative speakers. The paper reports on a study comparing the performances of native speakers of English with those of nonnative speakers, on a number of cloze tests constructed by manipulating variables in cloze test design. It is shown that native and nonnative speakers perform similarly on cloze tests with respect to these variables. The results are related to the claim that cloze tests (as distinct from cloze items) measure essentially lower-order language skills, and it is suggested that the notion of language proficiency needs to be revised. This has major implications for the construction and validation of language tests.

This study explores the relationship between student participation in the ESL classroom and proficiency in English, use of the target language outside the classroom, and field sensitivity. The 58 subjects, mainly from Asia, were studying ESL in an intensive program in Honolulu. Their classroom participation, which, for the purposes of the study, was defined as responses to teachers’general solicits and self-initiated turns, was coded during the beginning and end of an eight-week term. The subjects were also asked to fill out a questionnaire on their use of English outside of the classroom. In the sixth and seventh weeks of the term, the subjects were given an English cloze test and a measure of field dependence/independence; in addition, 26 subjects were administered an oral interview. The results indicate that there was no significant relationship between classroom participation and scores on either the oral interview or the cloze test, between classroom participation and use of the target language away from the classroom, and between classroom participation and field sensitivity. These findings are discussed with respect to the work of others who have conducted similar research.

The hypothesis that cloze measures are a function of content achievement among adult learners and, consequently, should be sensitive to instructional treatments was tested in two experimental studies. College juniors and seniors took tests immediately before (pre), immediately after (post) and four weeks after (delay) studying a prose passage. The types of tests administered in each session were: (1) a 20-item multiple-choice test, (2) a reproduction passage cloze test, (3) a recognition passage cloze test, (4) a reproduction summary cloze test, and (5) a recognition summary cloze test. All tests show significant differences between pre- and postconditions, and between recognition and reproduction modes. The reproduction summary cloze test was found to be the most sensitive to the instructional treatment, as indicated by an w2 statistic on pre-post measures. The summary cloze tests were resistant to forgetting while the cloze passage and multiple-choice tests show significant decreases in performance over the four week delay interval. The initial research on cloze measures is credited to W. L. Taylor (1953) when he reported the new method of obtaining so-called readability scores. A cloze test is constructed by removing every nth word from a passage of prose and by inserting a blank in its place. A commonly used cloze measure is the number of correct words that a subject provides for the blanks. Extensive research on cloze testing parameters (Rankin, 1965; Bormuth, 1967; Potter, 1968) indicates (1) that cloze scores are closely related to reading comprehension test scores, (2) that the "best" cloze procedure is obtained when every fifth word is removed from a passage, (3) that up to five parallel forms can be easily obtained from the same passage by using different words for the first blank word, and (4) that alternative methods of scoring responses do not appreciably change any of the test statistics except the mean number correct. It seems reasonable to expect that success in completing a section of cloze prose is primarily a function of (1) an understanding of how the language goes together (syntactic skills) and (2) an understanding of what the author is trying to say (achievement in the subject matter area). As students attain a firm grasp of syntactic relationships (probably by age 12), the first variable becomes relatively constant and one is left with the proposition that cloze measures are primarily a function of achievement. If this proposition is true, cloze measures should be sensitive to instructional treatments and they should respond in a pattern similar to other "accepted" indices of achievement. At least two studies have investigated the effects of instruction on cloze scores. Taylor (1957) administered a set of cloze, multiple-choice achievement and ability tests to Air Force trainees in a pre- and postinstruction design. The results showed that studying the passage significantly improved cloze and multiple-choice scores. In a similar study, Rankin et al. (1969) report a significant gain on cloze due to instruction. Both studies attempted to control for possible effects of taking a pretest.

This paper reports research into the interactive roles played in verbal comprehension processes by the sequence of textual elements, text-specific prior knowledge, and levels of language proficiency. Four cloze tests were administered to undergraduate (n=246) and graduate (n=240) native speakers of English and to undergraduate nonnative (n=238) speakers at three universities in northeast Texas. One test passage was a set of descriptive facts with very little linear connectivity. A second test was based on the chronological account of a psychological experiment. The third and fourth tests were scrambled versions of the first two. Prior to the administration of the tests, half of the subjects were allowed to read the entire intact sequentially ordered text before completing the cloze test derived from it. For the native speakers who read the simple collection of facts, textual sequence and topic-specific prior knowledge did not contribute significantly to comprehension; however, for all subjects who read the chronological account, variation in the text's naturally occurring sequence and the interaction of that sequencing with the reader's access to topic-specific prior knowledge were important factors in comprehension. Moreover, proficient nonnative speakers were significantly more able to capitalize on recently acquired topic-specific prior knowledge, especially when the cloze task that they were given was presented in its normal sequence. This findings are interpreted as evidence of nonnative textboundness.

This paper presents empirical data concerning the use of cloze tests to measure children's language proficiency in a bilingual education program. Grade five students in their sixth year of a primary French immersion program were tested using both English and French cloze tests. Correlations between the cloze test and other language achievement measures were calculated for both languages and found to be high. This suggests that in summative evaluations, the cloze technique provides an economical, valid and reliable measure of overall language proficiency. A detailed error analysis was also undertaken to compare quantitatively and qualitatively the errors made by bilingual students with those made by comparison groups of English students (in English) and students in francophone schools (in French). Generally speaking, few quantitative or qualitative differences were noted between the immersion students and the comparison groups. This suggests that strategies used to process the cloze passage by second language learners are similar to those used by their native language counterparts.

ing comprehension by means of the cloze procedure. In a cloze test, the examinee is required to fill in gaps in a given text. After Taylor developed the cloze to measure text difficulty for native readers, other researchers showed that it can measure foreign and second language proficiency as well.1 Opinions differ as to whether the random cloze (every nth word omitted) or rational cloze (the test designer decides which words to omit) is a better test of reading comprehension.2 We chose to use the rational cloze in order to focus our test of EFL

The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) was taken by 159 non-native speakers of English in Tehran, Iran. They also took a cloze test and two dictations. The former was scored for both exact and contextually acceptable responses. A correlation of.94 between the two methods recommends the exact method for non-native teachers of ESL and concurs with the result of a study by Stubbs and Tucker (1974). Cloze scores correlated with the combined dictations at.75. Cloze scored by either method was more highly correlated with the TOEFL total score (.79, acceptable word method;.78, exact word method) than was the combined dictation (.69). Confirming earlier research by Darnell (1968) and Oller and Conrad (1971), both cloze and dictation correlated better with the Listening Comprehension than with any other sub-section of the TOEFL. This tends to confirm the suspicion tha the Listening Comprehension section, which is a highly integrative and pragmatic task, is more valid than other sections of the TOEFL. On the whole, Listening Comprehension, cloze, and dictation were more highly correlated with each other, and with the remaining part scores on the TOEFL than the latter were with each other. This last fact provides strong support for integrative testing procedures.

Summary. This study investigates whether good and poor readers use different strategies when making use of the linguistic context, and in particular whether good readers make better use of the succeeding context by using a better strategy or whether they do so simply because of their superior knowledge. A cloze test was specially constructed to control for the readers' knowledge and, after successive refinements, was administered to 121 7- and 8-year-old children in their first year at junior school. The children were better at using the preceding context than the succeeding context (P< 0.001), and the better the reader the better was his use of the succeeding context (P

A cloze test of Spanish proficiency and a questionnaire dealing with linguistic and general ethnic attitudes were administered to 116 students in their third semester of Spanish at the University of New Mexico. Although the study was relatively unsuccessful in predicting second-language proficiency from attitudinal data, there was sufficient evidence to suggest that a positive orientation toward the local Chicano community was not a prerequisite for the successful acquisition of Spanish. The factorial structure of the linguistic and ethnic attitudes was also examined and comparable clusters of motivational, general attitudinal, and commitment items were obtained for the Anglo and Spanish-background students in the sample.

Situations constantly arise in which it would be helpful to measure readability or understandability of written material. Most of the available techniques for estimating understandability are difficult to apply and interpret. The paper describes a little-known method--cloze--that offers considerable promise in readability measurement. In addition to describing the cloze procedure, the paper provides specific instructions for administering a cloze test and examples from the professional literature of cloze applications. Attractions, as well as limitations, of the technique are given. Finally, two experiments are described in which the cloze procedure was used. In the first, the technique was shown to be useful with samples of readers having extremely different educational backgrounds: adult basic education students and people in graduate school. The second experiment demonstrated the utility of cloze in measuring the readability of material in another language (Vietnamese), which the experimenters could not read. Cloze differentiated two Vietnamese translations of the same English passage, in agreement with an independent criterion. Although the test subjects who read the material were Vietnamese, neither the experimenters nor the staff people who scored the subjects' responses were proficient in that language. (Author)

This article presents a convenient means of estimating the number of subjects and number of items required to attain various levels of precision in readability experiments involving cloze tests. Cloze tests are being used with increasing frequency as measures of the relative comprehension difficulties of passages of written language. A cloze test used for this purpose is made by replacing every nth word in a passage with an underlined blank of a standard length. Subjects are instructed to write in each blank the word they think was deleted. The mean proportion of correct responses is taken as a measure of the comprehension difficulty ot the passage. The tests are then used to determine if experimental alterations made in the passage change the difficulty of the passage.

9. Oiler, J. W., Jr. "Expectancy for Successive Elements," Invited paper presented at the TESOL Convention, New Orleans, March 1971. (a) 10. Oller, J. W., Jr. "Dictation as a Device for Testing Foreign-Language Proficiency," English Language Teaching, 25 (1971), 254-9. (b) 11. Oller, J. W., Jr. and Christine A. Conrad. "The Cloze Procedure and ESL Proficiency," Language Learning (in press, 1971). 12. Oiler, J. W., Jr. and Nevin Inal. "A Cloze Test of English Prepositions," TESOL Quarterly (in press, 1971). 13. Praninskas, J. Rapid Review of English Grammar. . Oiler, J. W., Jr. "Expectancy for Successive Eleents," Invited paper presented at the TESOL Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1959. 14. Rankin, E. J., Jr. An Evaluation of the Coze Procedure as a Technique for Measuring Reading Comprehension. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1957. 15. Ruddell, R. B. The Effect of Oral and Written Patterns of Language Structure on Reading Comprehension. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of Indiana, 1963. 16. Taylor, W. "Cloze Procedure: A New Tool for Measuring Readability," Journalism Quarterly, 30 (1953), 414-38.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the validity of cloze-elide tests of English proficiency for students who are similar to the TOEFL candidate population. Cloze-elide tests used in this research consisted of exercises in which an examinee is required to edit a prose passage by eliminating extraneous words that have been randomly interspersed throughout the original text of the passage. Students enrolled in university-level intensive English language programs were administered a series of tests including, in addition to cloze-elide tests, a form of the TOEFL, a multiple-choice cloze test, a traditional cloze exercise, and an essay that was holistically scored. Students were also rated by their instructors in twelve areas of English proficiency, and the students rated their own language competency through self-assessments in ten areas. A variety of student background information was also obtained. The design of the study aimed at contributing evidence of the construct validity of cloze-elide tests. Concurrent validity information is relevant to this question, but the evidence arising from factor analyses of the intercorrelations among these many measures is more pertinent. In summary, the new cloze-elide measures demonstrated very strong concurrent validity for TOEFL and other more widely used measures of second language proficiency. The factor analyses suggest that cloze-elide tests are good, indirect measures of English language proficiency, comparing very favorably with more commonly used testing procedures. Multiple regression analyses confirmed the usefulness of cloze-elide tests, which were generally one of the two best predictors of teacher ratings of students' English proficiency.

This study examined the relation of TOEFL® performance to a widely used variant of the cloze procedure–the multiple-choice (MC) cloze method. A main objective was to determine if categories of MC cloze items could be identified that related differentially to the various parts of the TOEFL. MC cloze items were prepared and classified according to whether the involvement of reading comprehension, as defined by sensitivity to long-range textual constraints, was primary or secondary. For two categories, reading comprehension was primary and knowledge of grammar or vocabulary was secondary, and for two other categories knowledge of grammar or vocabulary was primary and reading comprehension secondary. Examinees taking an operational TOEFL at domestic test centers were given the three basic sections of the test along with a fourth section containing the MC cloze items. Performance was examined for each of nine major language groups. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses for the basic TOEFL were performed first, to provide a basis for relating the MC cloze items to the TOEFL structure. These factor analyses suggested that, from a practical standpoint, TOEFL performance can be adequately described by just two factors, which relate to (a) Listening Comprehension, and (b) all other parts of the test–Structure, Written Expression, Vocabulary, and Reading Comprehension. Examination of the MC cloze test showed that the total MC cloze score was relatively reliable and that it was possible to estimate item response theory parameters for the MC cloze items with reasonable accuracy. Thus, the development of the MC cloze items was successful in these respects. However, the correlations among scores for the four MC cloze item categories were approximately as high as their reliabilities, thus providing no strong empirical evidence that the item types within the MC cloze test reflected distinct skills. Correlational analyses related the four MC cloze categories to the five parts of the TOEFL. These analyses revealed a slight tendency for MC cloze items that involved a combination of grammar and reading to relate more highly to the Structure and Written Expression parts of the TOEFL than the other parts, and for MC cloze items that involved a combination of vocabulary and reading to relate more highly to the Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension parts of the TOEFL than the other parts. Although this pattern was relatively consistent across language groups, however, the differences among correlations were not substantial enough to be of practical importance. Multiple regression analyses were performed, using total MC cloze score as the dependent variable and the five TOEFL parts as independent variables. The resulting multiple Rs were mostly in the lower to upper .90s, suggesting that total MC cloze performance can be predicted from TOEFL performance with a relatively high degree of accuracy. In general, the study provided no evidence that distinct skills are measured by the nonlistening parts of the TOEFL or by the four categories of MC cloze items. It would appear that the skills associated with grammar, vocabulary, and reading comprehension are highly interrelated, as assessed by the TOEFL and the MC cloze test.