Abstract
Cloze tests have been widely used for measuring reading comprehension since their introducing to the testing world by Taylor in 1953. But in 1982, Klein-Braley criticized cloze procedure mostly for their deletion and scoring problems. They introduced their newly developed testing procedure, C-test, which was an evolved form of cloze tests without their deficiencies (Klein-Braley, 1982 cited in Baghaei, 2008). After that, the effectiveness of C-test and cloze test became the main interest of the scientists in the field of language testing. The present study aims to compare the results of multiple-choice cloze test with those of C-test as measures of reading comprehension. To this end, one traditional C-test and one fixed ratio (n=7) multiple-choice cloze test were prepared from reading passages with similar readability level. The subjects of the study were 27 female EFL advanced learners. The results of the study revealed that multiple-choice cloze is a better measure of reading comprehension. Through a retrospective study which was done at the end of the tests, the students' impressions and opinions about tests and their own performance were recorded and taken into consideration. The implications of the findings and suggestions for more studies are discussed within a foreign language testing context.
Highlights
1.1 Testing Reading ComprehensionThe most common of the four skills tested is reading
Cloze tests have been widely used for measuring reading comprehension since their introducing to the testing world by Taylor in 1953
The present study aims to compare the results of multiple-choice cloze test with those of C-test as measures of reading comprehension
Summary
The most common of the four skills tested is reading. Harris (1968) puts across the idea that the same general types of tests which were used to test the reading ability of the Native English have the same effectiveness with the foreign learners of the language. In English as a foreign/second language, reading comprehension tests include a series of related items that are based on the same reading passage (Lee, 2004). These items can be posed after a passage as traditional comprehension questions multiple-choice, short-answer, cloze or c-test which are embedded in the passage itself (Klein-Braley, 1985). As Alderson (2000) argues, the selected text and test methods are so effective in testing reading comprehension
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