Scrambled Cloze Procedure: Does It Influence EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension and Writing Performance?

Abstract

The present study investigated the effect of using scrambled cloze procedure on reading and writing among intermediate EFL learners. To fulfill the purpose of the study, 60 participants were tested on a PET test, from whom 48 homogeneous participants were selected and assigned randomly to two groups of 25 and 23, as experimental and control group. Then, both groups were given a pre-test of writing and reading comprehension. During 14 sessions, the experimental group were provided with scrambled cloze samples and tasks while practicing paragraph writing and reading, whereas the control group did not, while they were practicing paragraph writing and reading. At the end, the two groups were tested in reading comprehension and writing, based on a posttest. Two raters scored the writing samples collected from two groups in the pre and posttest. Pearson correlation was used to compute the inter-rater reliability. The results showed the experimental group outperformed the control group in paragraph writing and reading comprehension. However, it was found that gender did not make a significant difference in reading comprehension and writing performance.