Search

Este estudo objetivou verificar os efeitos de um programa de remediação da compreensão de leitura. O delineamento usado foi quase experimental, com pré-teste, intervenção e pós-teste. Participaram da pesquisa 41 universitários, com idade de 18 a 51 anos, sendo 22 do Grupo Experimental e 19 do Grupo Controle. Foi utilizado o teste de Cloze no pré- e no pós-teste. Os resultados indicaram que os estudantes mostraram desempenho superior no pós-teste, visto que houve um incremento na pontuação em mais da metade dos participantes, mas que tal melhora foi insuficiente para mudar o nível de compreensão, na maioria dos casos. Pode-se concluir que as atividades desenvolvidas foram relevantes, principalmente porque favoreceram a conscientização dos estudantes sobre a importância da compreensão de leitura e do estudo eficiente.

To contribute further to the investigation of the impact of individual differences in language test performance, this study probes the relationship between foreign language learners’ emotional intelligence (EI) and their performance on cloze tests. For the purpose of this study, 82 intermediate EFL learners were selected from the University of Zanjan. Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale (SEIS, Schutte et.al, 1998) was used to assess emotional intelligence and its components based on Mayer and Salovey's view (1990), namely, appraisal of emotions in the self (AES), appraisal of emotions in others (AEO), emotional expression (EE), emotional regulation of the self (ERS), emotional regulation of others (ERO), and utilization of emotions for problem solving (UEPS). The results indicated no statistically significant relationship between EI and cloze test performance. Out of six components of EI, ERS and AES were found to be positively significantly associated with cloze test performance. As to gender differences in emotional intelligence, EI was not associated with gender. However, two components of EI, namely, ERS and ERO, differed significantly between males and females. Results also demonstrated that males’ performance on cloze test was significantly better than females’ performance. Discussions underscored the importance of incorporating programs for enhancing emotional intelligence related skills at schools and universities.

The importance of language and its formal instruction during the initial school phase has stimulated studies that seek options to implement them successfully. From this perspective, this study aimed to verify the effects of an intervention program on the language skills assessed. The participants were sixth-grade elementary school students evaluated in reading comprehension, spelling, word recognition and metatextual awareness. The intervention program was performed with 103 students, divided into experimental (EG) and control groups (CG). The experimental group attended 10 sessions, which included the use of gradual Cloze technique in texts of various textual genres, which were intended to develop the reading comprehension and the development of metatextual awareness. Analyses indicated the superiority of EG over the CG in the post-test. New studies are needed to permit the generalization of the results. Resumo: A importância da linguagem e de seu ensino formal durante a fase escolar inicial tem motivado estudos que procuram alternativas para implementá-las com sucesso. Sob essa perspectiva, o presente estudo objetivou verificar os efeitos de um programa de intervenção sobre as habilidades linguísticas avaliadas. Os participantes foram alunos do 6o ano do ensino fundamental, avaliados quanto à compreensão de leitura, à grafia, ao reconhecimento de palavras e à consciência metatextual. Foi realizado um programa de intervenção com 103 deles, separados em grupo experimental (GE) e de controle (GC). O grupo experimental participou de 10 sessões, usando a técnica de Cloze gradual em textos de gêneros textuais diversos, por meio dos quais pretendeu-se, além do desenvolvimento da compreensão de leitura, também o desenvolvimento da consciência metatextual. As análises indicaram superioridade do GE sobre o GC no pós-teste. Sugere-se a realização de novos estudos para permitir a generalização dos resultados. Resumen: La importancia del lenguaje y de su enseñanza formal durante la fase escolar inicial ha motivado estudios que buscan alternativas para implementarlas con éxito. Bajo esa perspectiva, este estudio tuvo como objetivo verificar los efectos de un programa de intervención en las habilidades lingüísticas evaluadas. Participaron estudiantes del sexto grado de la escuela primaria, evaluados respecto a la comprensión de lectura, la grafía, el reconocimiento de palabras y la consciencia metatextual. Se llevó a cabo un programa de intervención con 103 de ellos, divididos en grupos experimentales y de control. Los grupos experimentales participaron de 10 sesiones, que incluyeron el uso de la técnica de Cloze gradual en textos de géneros textuales diversos, con los que se pretendió, además del desarrollo de la comprensión lectora, también el desarrollo de la consciencia metatextual. Los análisis indicaron la superioridad del GE en comparación con el GC en el post-test. Se sugiere llevar a cabo nuevos estudios para permitir la generalización de los resultados.

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.

This study explores the use of a modified cloze procedure in assessing a child's oral comprehension. It encourages the speech pathologist and special educator to use this procedure in a diagnostic and therapeutic context with children who are developmentally delayed. Its routine use broadens the role definition of the educator as a skilled evaluator and trainer in grammatical decoding and subsequent vocabulary development.

This study examined the performance of 100 deaf college students on the "Degrees of Reading Power" (DRP) test, which uses a modified cloze procedure to assess reading ability in relation to prose difficulty. A bimodal distribution of DRP scores was obtained and compared with the prose difficulty of various reading materials. The mean test score for postlingually deaf subjects was significantly higher than for prelingually deaf subjects. DRP reading scores were significantly correlated with degree of hearing loss for prelingually deaf students and with articulation ability, but showed no significant correlation with speechreading ability or sign communication experience. The educational and research potential of this test for deaf students is discussed.

This paper provides an example of close analysis of student attempts to fill the gaps that comprise a cloze test. Such analysis may assist diagnosis of the difficulties that groups of students experience with specific text in particular contexts and illustrate the impact of those difficulties. The paper briefly touches on the international, academic role of English, outlines its contemporary role in universities in the People’s Republic of China and then describes a small quantitative study of student difficulty with specialist English that illustrates the impact of those difficulties on text accessibility. One hundred and fourteen Chinese undergraduate students completed a 50 item cloze test which was conceptually scored before close analysis of patterns in clear student error. The impact of the pattern of difficulty that emerged from the Chinese results is illustrated in a number of ways. The rank and proportional difficulty of the identified language features is presented in numerical form and compared with that emerging from previous use of the test in secondary school contexts. The proportional difficulty is then used to guide insertion of words from an unfamiliar language into the base text to provide an indication of the difficulty being experienced by the ‘average’ Chinese undergraduate in reading this passage prepared for a mid-level secondary school audience. The present case provides the opportunity of ‘proof of concept’ for extension of cloze techniques from holistic estimation of readability to identification of specific features of specialist writing styles that may cause difficulty for particular groups of readers. The results of this study suggest that such close analysis of error patterns may provide an illuminative lens on student difficulty with specific language styles within English and that, in this particular case, focus on general academic English may not be sufficient preparation for upper level discipline courses that make use of more specific styles.

牧グループは,日本人大学生の英語能力を測定するために,CD を聞きながら,問題用紙の空欄に英単語を埋めていく,簡易型(時間短縮系)英語能力測定試験としての5分間の最小英語テスト(Minimal English Test, MET)を開発した。本研究では,工学部の学生において,6単語毎(5単語置き)に空欄を設けた,6単語毎版(5単語置き版)最小英語テスト(Minimal English Test 6B, MET 6B)を実施し,MET6Bの得点と,大学入試センター試験(2014年)の英語の得点の間に,統計的有意な相関があるかどうかを調査した。回帰分析の結果,(1)工学部の学生に関して,MET 6Bは,大学入試センターの英語試験における読解力だけを予測するものではなく,読解力と聴解力を合わせた英語総合得点を予測するものであること,(2)これまで牧グループが,様々な学部の学生を対象に行ってきたMET6A/6B調査における,MET6A/6B得点と大学入試センター試験の英語総合点との間の相関係数に比べ(.53, Maki, Wasada, and Hashimoto (2003) developed the Minimal English Test (MET), a 5-minute English test, which requires the test taker to write a correct English word with 4 letters or fewer into each of the 72 blank spaces of the given sentences while listening to the CD. Revising the original MET, the Maki group created the MET 6A/6B, where every 6th word was a target word. The MET 6A and the MET 6B only differ in the position of the first target word. Their past surveys include the English learners of a variety of majors. In this research we investigated whether the MET 6B can correctly measure English proficiency of university freshmen who major in a particular academic field, such as engineering. We examined the correlations between the scores on the MET 6B and the scores on the English Part of the University Entrance Examinations administered by the National Center for University Entrance Examination in Japan. We call the University Entrance Examination (English Part) the Center Test (CT) in this paper. Our findings are as follows: First, for the engineering majors, the MET 6B does not simply predict the scores on the Reading Section of the CT 2014, but rather predicts the total scores on the CT 2014. Second, the correlation coefficient between the scores on the MET 6B and the total scores on the CT 2014 with respect to the engineering majors (r=.43) is far lower than the results of the Maki Group's past surveys from 2009 to 2014, in which the correlation coefficients between the scores on the MET 6A/6B and the total scores on the CTs are more or less consistent (from .53 to .61). This seems to indicate that the current version of the MET 6B does not precisely predict English proficiency of engineering majors, in terms of the total scores on the CT. This in turn suggests that there may be some unknown factors that cause the correlation coefficient between the scores on the MET 6B and the total scores on the CT 2014 for the English learners majoring in engineering to be far lower than those for the English learners of a variety of majors. It is then necessary to uncover those factors, and depending on what they are, create a different version of the MET as a useful tool to measure English proficiency of engineering majors.

Tests exist to predict a student's success in college mathematics and other subjects, but there appear to be none to predict success in biology. Discussions with colleagues indicated that the ability to recall sensory images may be critical to "seeing" biology. The cloze procedure is an ubiquitous device that can supposedly measure the readability of material, assist in the diagnosis of reading problems and then provide the means for effective reading instruction (Bormuth 1964; Neie 1972). The cloze procedure has been the subject of extensive research since it was developed by W. L. Taylor in 1953. The obvious appeal is the ease of cloze construction and scoring. Extraneous language variables may be excluded and the procedure may be adapted to those specific reading materials being used to teach a particular topic. It seemed to me that visualization and vocabulary are prerequisites to understanding biology. For this cloze procedure a 260-word descriptive passage on Chlamydomonas was chosen from the College Reading Manual (Shaw & Townsend 1969). The editors had adapted the material from R. J. Shave's Plant and Animal Life and had estimated the reading difficulty, using the Dale-Chall formula, as easy college reading. Thirty single words symbolizing sensory images were deleted from the passage. Words such as green, living and oval were omitted. Each sentence of the reading had from two to four omissions that were separated by at least two words. All blank spaces on the mutilated copy were of equal length. The cloze procedure was used with two sections of introductory biology. The students in two classes were invited to participate in the experiment and told the purpose was to try to identify some skills they would need to successfully profit (pass) from this class. They were provided with unmutilated copies of the reading and allowed five minutes to read it. The passage was collected and each student given the mutilated copy. The students were instructed to fill in the blanks or even guess if their recollection was weak. They were allowed 20 minutes, then the copies were collected. At the end of the semester final grades in Biology 101 were matched with the cloze procedure scores. It appeared that there was a significant correlation between the two scores and that a 50 percent on the cloze procedure was critical to the student's success. The comparison showed that 57 percent of the "A" students had scored 60 percent or better on the cloze procedure. No one below 40 percent on cloze made an "A" and only one of these students made a "B." Of those who made "D" or "F," 62 percent had scored less than 40 percent on the cloze procedure. This procedure was repeated the following fall with 248 students. Results of the second run showed that 62 students had scored below 40 percent. Results at the end of this semester substantiated the earlier results that cloze scores of 40 percent or less correlated with grades of "D" or "F." Unpublished data from another paper based on the material showed the t-test supported the predictive value of the cloze procedure in this experiment and suggested that cloze used for the recall of sensory images may be a significant tool for predicting a student's academic success in introductory biology (Randall unpublished manuscript). Tabulations of cloze results and biology grades from both trials indicate that students with cloze scores of less than 49 percent will have trouble and will probably fail while those whose scores are above 50 percent will pass the course. Those scoring 60 percent or better should be the "A" and "B" students. These findings correspond with previous research that indicated a frustration with the material at a cloze of 49 percent or less and academic independence above 60 percent (Mork 1971). While I cannot Jean E. Pugh is professor of biology and environmental science at Christopher Newport College, 50 Shoe Lane, Newport News, VA 23606. She has a B.S. from James Madison University and a M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. She taught primarily introductory biology at Old Dominion University from 1954 to 1965. Since then she has been at Christopher Newport College, where she was named Teacher of the Year in 1986, 1968 and 1966. Her research interests focus on ostracods.

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.

This study investigated the relationship that exists between syntax and reading comprehension. To measure this relationship, data were collected from ninth grade students by administering three tests to them: a cloze test, a chunk test, and a standardized reading test. Analysis of the results indicated that adverbial clause position does not appear to affect the reading comprehension of ninth grade students.

Two passages, one of which contained words of high associative strength and the other words of low associative strength, were presented once by tape recorder and followed by a written recall test. On all measures of recall, performance in the high association group was superior to performance in the low association group. The results of a cloze test suggested that guessing may have contributed more to recall scores in the high association group than the low association group.

Cloze, which combines the advantages of integrative testing and objective scoring, was investigated as a supplement to a standardized ESL test and as an alternative to a written composition test. Three tests of English language proficiency were given to a large group of students applying for admission to the American University of Beirut (AUB): the AUB English Test, a cloze test, and a written composition. The tests were taken by the same group of students at the same examination session, enabling direct study of interrelationships among the three measures. Regression analysis of the test scores showed that pairwise correlations were all high and that a combination of cloze test scores and AUB English Test scores significantly improved the prediction of communicative language proficiency, as measured by the composition test scores. In addition, there was a substantial residual correlation between the cloze and writing tests, which suggests that these tests may measure in common some aspects of language ability beyond those that they share with the AUB English Test, a standardized ESL test. These results indicate that a cloze component can serve as a valuable supplement in language proficiency testing. Further implications of the findings of the study are discussed.

Teachers of English as a second language are beginning to recognize the value of overall language proficiency tests in their programs. One such test of global proficiency is the cloze test, a type of fill-in-the-blank test constructed by randomly deleting words from a prose passage, and replacing them with blanks. Cloze tests appear to be valid, reliable language proficiency tests that can easily be constructed and used by any ESL teacher (Aitken 1975; Stubbs and Tucker 1974; and Oiler 1973). The purpose of this paper is to provide some guidelines on the construction, administration, scoring, and interpretation of cloze tests, as well as to discuss a possible explanation of the cognitive processes involved in taking a doze test. It is hoped that this discussion of the cloze procedure will be comprehensive enough to allow ESL teachers to use the cloze procedure in their own classrooms.

ONE OF THE fundamental issues on which different theories of reading and memory disagree is whether lexical information is retained in memory. The present study aimed to investigate this question by comparing the performance of two groups of subjects on a modified cloze test; one of these groups read the story from which the test was constructed before attempting the test whereas the second group did not. Approximately 1 week later both groups were retested. The performance of these groups demonstrated that lexical information was retained in memory, thus supporting the claim that lexical information persists in memory representations of meaning.

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.

These two major findings serve as a promising beginning in the research which will eventually make the cloze test a global measure of language performance. In striving for this goal we must go beyond the current use of cloze tests as a device for placement into and within groups by exploring the individual student's text comprehension and test performance. This paper presents two partial scoring techniques now being used experimentally, which facilitate a more accurate and integrated utilization of the cloze test. These techniques not only systematize partial credit scoring of cloze tests, but also serve a diagnostic function for the teacher and for the placement test examiner.

California, 1970. "John W. Oiler Jr. and Christine A. Conrad, "The Cloze Procedure and ESL Proficiency." Language Learning, xxII (June 1972), 1-15. 9Joseph Bartow Stubbs and G. Richard Tucker, "The Cloze Test as a Measure of English Proficiency." The Modern Language Journal, LVI (September-October 1974), 239-41. "'John G. Copeland, Ralph Kite, and Lynn Sandstedt, Civilizaci6n y cultura (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1977); John G. Copeland, Ralph Kite, and Lynn Sandstedt, Conversaci6n y repaso (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1977). 'The cloze test operates on the principle of reduced redundancy. That is, if we delete information we force the learner to utilize his knowledge of the context and the redundancy of the language to supply the answer. Increasing the interval between deletions increases the redundancy of the passage. The additional cues to the learner produce improved scores on the test.

In recent years the cloze test procedure has become one of the most widely discussed testing procedures for measuring foreign language proficiency. First applied in the 1950's "in reference to determining the readability of passages in the reader's native language, the [cloze] technique was soon applied to the measurement of reading comprehension in first language and then to achievement in second-language reading as well."' Several studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of cloze

Although research on the cloze test has offered differing evidence regarding what language abilities it measures, there is a general consensus among researchers that not all the deletions in a given cloze passage measure exactly the same abilities. An important issue for test developers, therefore, is the extent to which it is possible to design cloze tests that measure specific abilities. Two cloze tests were prepared from the same text. In one, different types of deletions were made according to the range of context required for closure, while in the other a fixed-ratio deletion procedure was followed. These tests were administered to 910 university and pre-university students, including both native and non-native speakers of English, with approximately half assigned at random to take the fixed-ratio test and the other half taking the rationally deleted test. While both tests were equally reliable and had equal criterion validity, the fixed-ratio test was significantly more difficult. Analyses of responses to different types of deletions suggest that the difficulty of cloze items is a function of the range of syntactic and discourse context required for closure. The study also provides practical and empirically supported criteria for making rational deletions and suggests that cloze tests can be designed to measure a range of abilities.

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.

How can we determine the relative readability of various instructional materials in mathematics? It has been argued that readability formulas devised for ordinary English prose are not appropriate for use with mathematical material (Kane, 1968, 1970). The need for readability formulas specially devised for the language of mathematics seems clear. The results of this study will suggest that the cloze procedure (Taylor, 1953, 1954, 1957) is adaptable to the language of mathematics, is usable as a measure of readability within that language, and is likely to serve as a criterion variable in the production of readability formulas for the language of mathematics. Traditionally, the readability of ordinary English materials has been measured by mean performance on reading comprehension tests covering sample passages from the material-the higher the mean comprehension score the more readable the material. Formulas to predict readability were devised by using the mean comprehension score as a criterion variable to determine the best linear combination of predictor variables, generally from the domains of vocabulary difficulty and syntactic complexity. Thus, the readability of ordinary English materials could be assessed without recourse to a direct experiment involving comprehension test data collection (Klare, 1963). Producing comparable readability formulas for the language of mathematics would require from 50 to 100 passages, each with a reliable and valid reading comprehension test. The production of this many comprehension tests would be a formidable task because there are potential weaknesses in such tests that are difficult to insure against-the reading level of a test and its passage may not be the same; the writing style of the passage may not be retained in the test; or test items may require inferences that were not intended by the passage author. In the context of ordinary English, the cloze procedure, as a substitute for comprehension tests, overcomes these problems. A cloze test is constructed by deleting certain words and symbols from a passage (usually every fifth word) and replacing them with blanks. The subject attempts to complete the passage. His cloze score for a passage is the number of responses that match the deleted material. In ordinary English, cloze scores are

Although there is considerable evidence supporting the predictive validity of cloze tests, recent research into the construct validity of cloze tests has produced differing results. Chihara et al. (1977) concluded that cloze tests are sensitive to discourse constraints across sentences, while Alderson (1979) concluded that cloze tests measure only lower-order skills. Anderson (1980) has concluded that Cloze tests measure sensitivity to both cohesive relationships and sentence-level syntax. Factor analytic studies (Weaver and Kingston 1963, Ohnmacht et al. 1970) have identified several factors in cloze and other language tests and suggest that cloze deletions should be based on the linguistic and coherence structures of language. In the present study, the trait structure of a cloze test was examined using confirmatory factor analysis. A cloze passage with rationally selected deletions of syntactic and cohesive items was constructed and given to two groups of non-native English speaking students entering the University of Illinois. A trait structure with three specific traits and one general trait provided the best explanation of the data. The results suggest that a modified cloze passage, using rational deletions, is capable of measuring both syntactic and discourse level relationships in a text, and that this advantage may outweigh considerations of reduced redundancy which underlie random deletion procedures.

The cloze test has received considerable attention in recent years from testers and teachers of English as a foreign language, and is becoming more widely used in language tests, both in the classroom and in standardized tests. However, most of the research has been carried out with native speakers of English and the results do not produce clear-cut evidence that the cloze test is a valid test of reading comprehension. The article reports on a series of experiments carried out on the cloze procedure where the variables of text difficulty, scoring procedure and deletion frequency were systematically varied and that variation examined for its effect on the relationship of the cloze test to measures of proficiency in English as a Foreign Language. Previous assumptions about what the cloze procedure tests are questioned and it is suggested that cloze tests are not suitable tests of higher-order language skills, but can provide a measure of lower-order core proficiency. Testers and teachers should not assume that the procedure will produce automatically valid tests of proficiency in English as a Foreign Language.

In recent years second language researchers have examined particular learner traits, such as cognitive style, to ascertain their relationship to progress in learning another language. This paper explores the influence of one student characteristic, field dependent-independent cognitive style, on second language test performance, especially as it relates to performance on the integrative type of measure known as the cloze test. Approximately 250 college students enrolled in a first semester Spanish course formed the sample group for this correlational study. Students were administered the Group Embedded Figures Test of field dependence-independence (FD/I) along with several measures of linguistic, communicative, and integrative competence. The results showed student FI to be related consistently in a positive albeit modest fashion to second language test performance. Most notable was the correlation between student FI and cloze test performance (r= .43, p. < .001). The relationship was less marked on other measures such as final course grade (r = .21, p. < .001). This suggests there may be a cognitive style bias operating in conjunction with cloze test performance. That is, such measures may call forth cognitive restructuring abilities more readily available to more field independent individuals. In turn, it implies the need to use some caution when employing or interpreting cloze tests for placement or achievement purposes.

WRITERS IN LANGUAGE development have identified the importance of grammatical (sentence structure) knowledge to the following areas of language processing: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It has been suggested that instruction in one of these four areas aimed at increasing grammatical knowledge should produce gains in other areas. Results in the research literature have shown significant gains in syntactic fluency on the part of subjects who received a synthetic method of grammatical instruction, such as sentence-combining, over analytic approaches, such as formal grammar instruction. The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of a synthetic approach in teaching writing to analytic approaches on growth in listening and reading. One hundred twenty-four grade four students were instructed in one of three methods: sentence-combining (synthetic), sentence-reduction (analytic), or element identification (analytic). One of two instructors taught each of the treatment conditions. Subjects were blocked according to reading ability as determined by a pretest measure. Measures included two measures of reading growth, one measure of listening growth, and assessments of writing growth. Analyses of covariance and subsequent post hoc analyses on the data indicated a significant difference of the sentence-combining group over the textbook group on all measures except the standardized test of reading comprehension. Subjects in the sentence-reduction group performed significantly better than the textbook group on only the cloze test of reading comprehension. Conclusions and implications are drawn from the analyses of the data and discussed.

CLOZE TESTS ARE FREQUENTLY USED to measure reading comprehension. Although cloze is generally accepted as a global measure of reading comprehension, and cloze test results are reportedly well correlated with those of traditional comprehension tests, the question of which specific components of reading comprehension are measured by cloze tests has not been adequately explored. This study assessed the sensitivity of cloze passages as measures of the ability to use information across sentence boundaries. Three experiments were carried out. Standard cloze passages were administered to subjects; these same passages, with scrambled sentence sequences, were administered to other subjects; still other passages were used which were constructed by embedding single sentences from the original passages in other, non-supportive text. No performance differences due to sentence order or to the presence of supportive text were found, even with a timed cloze test, suggesting an important limitation on cloze as a measure of this aspect of reading comprehension. Implications of the findings are discussed.

1. One of the three achievement tests used in the study, according to the recent report, was a "discrete-point [italics added] grammar and vocabulary test" (p. 490). The "discrete-point" test was actually a combination of two separate sections, according to the 1984 report. One section consisted of 5 items that required the formulation of interrogative sentences, and the other section included a 10-item cloze test.

The cloze technique is explored as a basis for measuring the skill of non-native speakers in handling English prepositions. Three groups of subjects are tested on an English cloze passage in which only prepositions have been deleted: the three groups consist of 19 native speakers of English (G-I), 53 native speakers of Turkish (G-II), and 110 foreign students entering UCLA from a wide variety of language backgrounds (G-III). An item analysis and a response frequency analysis are computed along with various test statistics for each group. The data suggest that a cloze test of prepositions works best with students from a variety of backgrounds (G-III) but is also useful for a group from a homogeneous language background (G-II). The response frequency analysis reveals that certain intralingual confusion occurs regardless of language background; other errors for G-II seem best explained by a contrastive analysis based on translation equivalents.

REPORTS RELATIONSHIPS between three divergent thinking abilities and modified and regular cloze performance. The cloze procedure was, adapted in an attempt to elicit more divergent thinking. Guilford's Controlled Associations, Expressional Fluency, and Alternate Uses Tests were administered to all subjects. A cloze test was adapted to a form requiring multiple responses in each blank. Data were analyzed in 2 x 2 analyses of covariance with I.Q. as the covariate and with the factors of high-low divergent thinking ability and type of cloze form, regular or adapted, as the independent variables. Subjects were 113 seventh graders. Results indicated that subjects who were high in associational fluency scored significantly higher on cloze, the adapted cloze form did not elicit higher levels of cloze performance, and there was only one interaction, between associational fluency and cloze form, that approached significance. It is important that educators and researchers recognize the influence associational fluency has on cloze results.

The statistical analysis technique of correlation has extensively been used in second/foreign language testing research for a variety of purposes. Most commonly, the technique has been used to validate newly constructed language tests (particularly cloze tests) against previous supposedly valid measures. Tests such validated are meant to substitute the older ones, and based on these newly validated tests, important decisions are made on the candidates’ suitability for certain careers, entry into universities, and so on. All such decisions can be appropriate and justified only when the validating technique is the right one. Doubts are cast in this paper on such widespread and unquestioned use of the technique of correlation for substitution purposes. After a short introduction, the meaning of correlation and cloze test is clarified. Then, a few studies in which the technique of correlation has been misapplied are reviewed. Finally, the argument against correlational validation is presented, and suggestions as to alternative validation techniques are offered.

The study was, in fact, an attempt to investigate any probable role of the cognitive style of language learners in their performance of two varieties of cloze test; that is, c-test and cloze-elide test. In other words, the study tried to see if being an FD or FI cause any significant difference in their performance on such two tests or not. To achieve such a purpose, 95 language learners were selected on the basis of availability sampling procedure and then their cognitive style was determined by using Group Embedded Figure Test (GEFT). After that, a series of c-test and cloze-elide tests were distributed among the two types of learners. In the end, the study revealed that there is a significant difference between the cognitive style of learners and their performance on the two intended tests. The study also showed that with regard to c-tests, FI learners have a better performance in comparison to FDs. However, regarding the cloze-elide test, FD learners outperform FIs.