The Effect of Regular Practice with Cloze Passages on EFL Students’ Reading Ability

Abstract

As completing blanks in a cloze passage requires use to be made of three main knowledge sources involved in reading comprehension, that is, linguistic, textual, and background knowledge, it was hypothesized that regular practice with cloze passages could lead to the enhancement of the reading ability. To test this hypothesis, two groups of adult Iranian students studying general English were selected. The students in the experimental group (30 students) were given regular practice with fixed-ratio deletion cloze passages for 13 sessions (30 minutes per session). The same passages were given to the students in the control group (30 students). However, the passages in the control group were in full but followed by carefully written comprehension questions. The practice sessions for the control group were also 13 and the time taken to work on each passage was 30 minutes per session. At the end of the treatment phase, the comparison made between the two groups’ scores on a standardized reading test in the pretest and posttest stage revealed that those in the experimental group had improved more significantly in reading comprehension than those in the control group, a finding that not only underscores the pedagogical value of the cloze procedure but also points to the significance of a process-oriented approach to the teaching of the reading skill.