Selective Deletions with Multiple Cues: A Variation of the Cloze Procedure as a Technique for Teaching and Testing Reading

Abstract

With the possible exception of the audio-lingual era, the goal of reading comprehension has always enjoyed a rather high priority in the foreign language classroom. It is somewhat unexpected, therefore, that relatively few techniques for teaching and testing reading comprehension have been proposed over the years. Goodman states the problem aptly when he says it is ironic that more attention has been given to the process of language production than to the process by which language is understood, even though most researchers agree that receptive control of aspects of language precedes generative control.' Clearly, an overwhelming number of former methodologies and materials have been production oriented.2 In recent years, however, foreign language educators have come to the realization that reading is anything but a passive skill,3 that it is, in fact, a complex process and that students should be trained in strategies to achieve reading comprehension.4 Furthermore, there is reason to believe that all language skills stand to benefit from the addition of a systematic approach to the development of the reading skill.5 Finally, it should not be overlooked that for many of our students, reading is the skill they are most likely to use once they leave the classroom. It is also the skill which is retained the longest.6 With increased interest in reading, new methods of teaching and testing this skill need to be explored. One technique which appears to hold a great deal of potential for the foreign language classroom is the cloze procedure, developed and used initially to measure the readability of prose. The term is one gestalt psychology applies to the human tendency to complete a familiar but not-quite-finished pattern-to perceive a broken circle as a whole one, for example, by mentally closing the gap.7 This same principle has been applied to language in various formats, the most common of which is open-ended cloze where every n't word is deleted from a passage of running prose and replaced with a blank of standard length. The task of the reader is to restore the incomplete text by supplying the missing words. Research indicates that the cloze procedure is indeed a powerful tool. Oiler describes it as nothing less than a stroke of raw genius.8 Caulfield