Cloze Procedures and Long-Term Vocabulary Retention.

This paper discusses the kinds of vocabulary items retained by a group of native German speakers in the context of an English language proficiency examination. Its main purpose is to indicate the kind of information that can be gathered using cloze procedures, with the aim to integrate this information into further learning strategies for the acquisition and retention of second language vocabulary. Students of English at a German university were given an examination testing vocabulary, reading comprehension, syntax, and translation. A statistical analysis of cloze responses was undertaken. Results reveal that not only are the correct responses to cloze passages of interest, but also those responses considered "incorrect." The author investigates the kinds of vocabulary items generated in response to the cloze items. In all but a few cases, a high degree of structural sensitivity was exhibited by the students. Cloze items, along with whatever else they may reveal about the readability of a given prose text or about other language skills, can provide information about the vocabulary range of a group of subjects. In dealing with a "dictionary of expectancy," students reveal the strategies used in selecting a finite set of words from a potentially infinite second language vocabulary. (JK)