THE USE OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH CLOZE TESTS IN A BILINGUAL EDUCATION PROGRAM EVALUATION: VALIDITY AND ERROR ANALYSIS1

Abstract

This paper presents empirical data concerning the use of cloze tests to measure children's language proficiency in a bilingual education program. Grade five students in their sixth year of a primary French immersion program were tested using both English and French cloze tests. Correlations between the cloze test and other language achievement measures were calculated for both languages and found to be high. This suggests that in summative evaluations, the cloze technique provides an economical, valid and reliable measure of overall language proficiency.A detailed error analysis was also undertaken to compare quantitatively and qualitatively the errors made by bilingual students with those made by comparison groups of English students (in English) and students in francophone schools (in French). Generally speaking, few quantitative or qualitative differences were noted between the immersion students and the comparison groups. This suggests that strategies used to process the cloze passage by second language learners are similar to those used by their native language counterparts.