Multiple-choice Cloze Research Articles

Exploration of vocational high school students experiencing difficulty in cloze test performances: a mixed-methods study in Taiwan

This study addressed a gap in existing research on Multiple-Choice (MC) cloze tests by focusing on the learners’ perspective, specifically examining the difficulties faced by vocational high school students (VHSs). A nationwide sample of 293 VHSs participated, providing both quantitative and qualitative data through a self-developed questionnaire. The results revealed that vocabulary and grammar posed the greatest challenges in the MC cloze test, while sentence patterns were perceived as the least difficult by VHSs. Factors contributing to these difficulties included the need for increased focus on vocabulary and grammar learning. Some participants attributed challenges to personal perceptions of intellectual capability, while others highlighted the influential role of teachers’ attitudes on their learning motivations and outcomes. The study suggested implications for test designs and teaching approaches. Despite these contributions, the study acknowledged limitations and offered suggestions for future research directions.

The effects of L1, task, and classifier type in Chinese-L2 learners’ use of classifiers

AbstractThis study explores three potential factors that influence Chinese L2 learners’ classifier use in a classroom setting: L1 background, task, and classifier type. We developed a picture-prompted test, including composition, free cloze, and multiple-choice cloze questions to elicit the use of classifiers. Participants were 50 Chinese L2 learners from Arabic, English, and Japanese L1 backgrounds. Although Japanese L1 participants performed numerically better than their Arabic and English counterparts, statistical analysis suggests that L1 was not a significant predictor of test performance. The composition task was shown to be conducive to the use of test-taking strategies, and it revealed a higher classifier accuracy than the more constrained multiple-choice task. Meanwhile, there was an interaction between L1 and task, suggesting that L1 influence may be conditioned by task type. Moreover, our logistic model predicts different levels of accuracy for classifier use by type, which potentially suggests a developmental path of acquiring classifiers licensed by the most prominent noun feature they are associated with, with shape being the earliest, followed by animate, inanimate, and concept.

B1 seviyesinde dilbilgisi ölçen çıkartmalı sınavlarda görsel araçların kullanılmasının etkisi: Yarı-deneysel bir çalışma

A considerable amount of literature has been published about the use of visual aids in language classrooms to see if they foster learning or classroom participation. Visuals have been used in test format for years, as well; however, there is a dearth of research to indicate how effective the presence and the type of visuals in testing grammar through multiple-choice cloze tests. To close the gap in the literature, the current study aims to identify the effect of using visual aids, specifically real pictures, diagrams, and no pictures in a cloze test on students’ grades and test completion times. This is a quasi-experimental, quantitative study. The data was collected through cloze tests that tested grammar via multiple-choice items within a context about synesthesia. The sample consisted of 64 B1 level preparatory school students (27 females, 37 males) studying at a state university in Istanbul. The participants were from different majors. The data were analyzed through SPSS. The results revealed a significant difference between the visual types and students’ completion time of the texts. It took different groups between 2 minutes to 7 minutes to complete the test. The real picture group spent the most time (M= 4.45), which was followed by the diagram group (M= 3.47) and no visual test group (M=3.45). However, no significant differences were found between the grades of the students who took tests with different visuals.

Prepping a prep course: a corpus linguistics approach

The purpose of this article is to explore and report some possible uses of corpus linguistics tools and techniques in a preparatory course for an international exam, focusing on helping students use corpora to find and analyze collocations and colligations when doing and creating multiplechoice cloze exercises. The participants were undergraduate students taking either a teacher training or a translation program. After discussing some research carried out on the pedagogical implications of using corpora, the article presents how a six-session preparatory course was designed and implemented, and the tools used to check participants’ perception of learning. The compiled data analyzed how participants reacted towards using an online corpus while getting themselves ready for the Use of English component of exams. The results demonstrated that corpus techniques were felt to be useful tools as far as fostering students’ autonomy was concerned. The study ends with a brief discussion on its limitations.

중국인 중·고급 학습자의 한국어 유의어 지식 양상

This study investigated the aspects of Korean synonym knowledge of Chinese intermediate and advanced learners. To meet the goal, 10 synonym pairs were selected through pretests and three tests were developed such as O/X test, multiple-choice cloze test, and cloze test. Sixty students(twenty per each level from 4 to 6 in TOPIK) and 20 native speakers were employed. As results, (i) native speakers also checked wrong in several O/X tests indicating having wrong intuition of use of some synonyms, (ii) rough development was found in synonym knowledge following to the proficiency, but the aspect is very irregular showing discrepancy from that of native speakers. This study claimed that proficiency was not able to predict development of synonym knowledge so that explicit educational intervention would be necessary.

Item Types: Their Effect on the Sensitivity of Multiple-Choice Cloze Tests

To evaluate the sensitivity of multiple-choice cloze (MCC) tests that use different types of items—syntactic, semantic, and connective—to assess reading ability, 170 English as a foreign language (EFL) students in a vocational college in Taiwan were recruited. The students were divided into two groups (level A and level B) based on their scores on 4 classroom reading comprehension tests. Both groups then took 9 MCC tests that included a total of 50 cloze questions. Connective items were most sensitive for assessing reading ability. Research results and pedagogical applications are discussed.

FOSTERING AUTONOMOUS LEARNERS OF VOCABULARY ACQUISITION USING CONTENT-BASED ICT METHODS

Purpose: This paper investigated that (1) the effective use of content-based ICT methods of vocabulary acquisition through reading activities, and (2) the encouragement of learner's vocabulary building up autonomous learning. A considerable number of studies have been conducted on vocabulary acquisition in the EFL field in Japan,and researchers advocate vocabulary knowledge is the most important factor contributing to reading comprehension, yet, a firm effective pedagogy has not been established. In fact, university students encounter difficulties in reading comprehension because of their deficiencies in vocabulary knowledge during English reading class.
 Methodology: The free applications, Quizlet and Kahoot!, were adopted to incorporate language-focused learning while adding some gamification aspects to aid in vocabulary acquisition. The experiment was conducted in a Japanese undergraduate first-year reading class over an 11-week period. Quizlet was used for vocabulary learning prior to the reading class. Students were given multiple-choice vocabulary Cloze tests of new words from the textbook using Kahoot!, a free game-based educational platform.
 Main Findings: The results of this study indicated that content-based vocabulary instruction using ICT is effective and improves learner’s academic performance in vocabulary acquisition. Moreover, questionnaires were thoroughly reviewed and uncovered that students felt they developed more autonomy and this enhanced their motivation for vocabulary learning.
 Implications: In view of this study, ICT methods closely related to reading contexts and a variety of applications for vocabulary acquisition and improvement of reading performance should be introduced in EFL classrooms.
 Originality: This study was conducted in a Japanese undergraduate first-year reading class by author researcher.

An Instructional Application of the Multiple-Choice Cloze: A Case Study in the EFL Classroom

We explored using multiple-choice cloze (MCC) tests for classroom instruction. The practice of “testing leading teaching” is frequently criticized because it might distort the original teaching objectives. We do not primarily emphasize how to get high scores; instead, we show how to use testing techniques and teaching activities to provide feedback that energizes teaching methods and increases learning effectiveness. We analyzed MCC test-taking strategies, which include leading students to: 1) skim for the first and the last sentence in cloze passages; 2) read the whole cloze passage to grasp its general idea; 3) look for contextual clues; 4) orally express (“thinking out loud”) their reasons for choosing one MCC test item instead of another; and 5) conduct group discussions. Finally, 6) teachers guided the entire class, discussed contextual and situational clues, and provided feedback about student choices and reasons. The experimental design of this research primarily compared the performance between two groups: Experimental and Control. Differences in cloze scores between the two groups were significant, but differences in reading comprehension scores were not. After six 25-minute MCC test lessons, Experimental group students had better MCC test scores than did Control group students. Our findings supported our hypothesis that MCC instruction, even for a short time, would improve performance on a cloze test. We also discuss how to use MCC tests to teach strategies for answering MCC test items.

Developing, evaluating, and refining an automatic generator of diagnostic multiple choice cloze questions to assess children's comprehension while reading

AbstractWe describe the development, pilot-testing, refinement, and four evaluations of Diagnostic Question Generator (DQGen), which automatically generates multiple choice cloze (fill-in-the-blank) questions to test children's comprehension while reading a given text. Unlike previous methods, DQGen tests comprehension not only of an individual sentence but of the context preceding it. To test different aspects of comprehension, DQGen generates three types of distractors: ungrammatical distractors test syntax; nonsensical distractors test semantics; and locally plausible distractors test inter-sentential processing.(1)A pilot study of DQGen 2012 evaluated its overall questions and individual distractors, guiding its refinement into DQGen 2014.(2)Twenty-four elementary students generated 200 responses to multiple choice cloze questions that DQGen 2014 generated from forty-eight stories. In 130 of the responses, the child chose the correct answer. We define thedistractivenessof a distractor as the frequency with which students choose it over the correct answer. The incorrect responses were consistent with expected distractiveness: twenty-seven were plausible, twenty-two were nonsensical, fourteen were ungrammatical, and seven were null.(3)To compare DQGen 2014 against DQGen 2012, five human judges categorized candidate choices without knowing their intended type or whether they were the correct answer or a distractor generated by DQGen 2012 or DQGen 2014. The percentage of distractors categorized as their intended type was significantly higher for DQGen 2014.(4)We evaluated DQGen 2014 against human performance based on 1,486 similarly blind categorizations by twenty-seven judges of sixteen correct answers, forty-eight distractors generated by DQGen 2014, and 504 distractors authored by twenty-one humans. Surprisingly, DQGen 2014 did significantly better than humans at generating ungrammatical distractors and marginally better than humans at generating nonsensical distractors, albeit slightly worse at generating plausible distractors. Moreover, vetting DQGen 2014's output and writing distractors only when necessary would halve the time to write them all, and produce higher quality distractors.

Effects of Different Response Types on Iranian EFL Test Takers’ Performance

Test method facet is one of the factors which can have an influence on the test takers’ performance. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effects of two different response types, multiple-choice cloze and multiple-choice test, on the pre-intermediate and intermediate test takers’ reading comprehension performance. To this end, 40 pre-intermediate and intermediate learners participated in the study. To counterbalance the practice effect, the participants of the study at both pre-intermediate and intermediate levels were randomly assigned into two groups. For each level, there were two types of tests and two test administrations. Within each level, the two groups took these two tests in a different order. For all participants of the study there were two scores based on multiple- choice cloze and multiple-choice tests. Two Paired sample t tests were separately run to compare the pre-intermediate and intermediate test takers’ performance on multiple-choice cloze and multiple-choice tests. Two independent samples t tests were run to compare the pre-intermediate and intermediate test takers on these two tests. There was no significant difference between the pre-intermediate test takers’ performance on these two types of tests. There was a significant difference between intermediate test takers’ performance on the tests. There was no significant difference between the pre-intermediate and intermediate test takers’ performance on the multiple-choice cloze tests. The intermediate test takers outperformed the pre-intermediate test takers only on the multiple-choice tests. Based on these results it can be concluded that test methods can have an influence on the test takers’ performance, especially at higher proficiency levels and learners may need to have reached a certain level of proficiency to be able to understand the text.

O teste cloze de múltipla escolha na avaliação em compreensão de leitura na língua inglesa: um estudo com mestrandos da área da saúde

The objective of this paper is to present partial results from a master’s research aimed at assessing English reading comprehension among 69 master’s students enrolled at five health-related graduate programs by means of a multiple-choice cloze test. The cloze test is used for assessing reading comprehension at several levels of education and its acceptability among researchers has been demonstrated in many national and international publications (KLEIMAN, 1983; SANTOS 2005, 2009; OLIVEIRA 2009; BROWN, 2002, among others). Reading comprehension through the cloze technique involves, among other variables, the capacity of developing appropriate associations between the previous knowledge and the printed information (inferential and lexical comprehension). The possibility of using the cloze test for measuring English as a Second Language proficiency is old and has been considered by many people an effective and practical means of assessing reading comprehension. Thus, we intend to show how this test was elaborated and applied to our participants. We will also show the strengths and limitations of this technique for assessing reading in English.

The role of ESP courses in general English proficiency

The purpose of the present paper is the study of the interaction between learning English for Specific Purposes (ESP), in particular, English for the Financial Sector, and general English proficiency. The research examines the effects of an ESP course being taught for a year on the students' general English proficiency.Two sets of tests were prepared for that purpose and administered to 30 first-year students of finance and law. The students took the placement test twice, at the beginning and at the end of the school year. To monitor test performance over a research period, a parallel form measuring the same competences was administered at the beginning of the second semester. In the test development process a special consideration has been paid to the level of difficulty and its relation to the students' prior educational context. Drawing on the National State Matura exams the test is set at Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) Level B2. As regards its content the test is comprised of reading comprehension tasks (multiple matching, multiple-choice cloze, gapped text) and grammar tasks aiming to examine lexical and grammatical competence.There were two major assumptions in this study: 1) Learning ESP can improve students' general English proficiency, and 2) There is a more substantial improvement in lexical competence as compared to the improvement in grammatical competence.There is strong evidence in support of the first hypothesis, whereas for the second one the results were ambiguous. After major findings are presented and discussed, implications for ESP teaching are given in closing.

The Effect of Content Familiarity and Gender on EFL Learners’ Performance on MC Cloze Test and C-Test

The present study has investigated the effects of familiar and unfamiliar content on Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ performance on Multiple- choice (MC) cloze test and C-test. Also, it has intended to compare the effects of gender on the learners’ performance on MC cloze test with familiar and unfamiliar content as well as its effects on their performance on C-test with familiar and unfamiliar content. During the testing period, 107 examinees took an Oxford quick placement test and a homogeneous sample including 30 males and 30 females was selected. They were from Islamic Azad University Najafabad Branch ranged in age from 20 to 35. The first session of the research process was dedicated to MC cloze test with familiar and unfamiliar content and a week later, the second session to C-test with familiar and unfamiliar content. The results showed that the participants had more successful performance on two tests with familiar content. Moreover, the results indicated that gender had no significant effect on the participants’ performance on two tests.

Multiple-choice cloze exercise generation through English grammar learning support

Intelligent Tutoring System ITS is a learning support system which provides an individual learning environment to students. ITS gives learning contents to students according to the learning strategy based on their understanding degree. Many traditional ITSs, however, have static predefined contents without regard to individual preferences. It causes that students lose their motivation. Our research objective is to develop a system which automatically generates multiple-choice cloze exercises from input text according to the student's understanding. Our target is supporting individual study of learning English grammar. In this paper, we propose a representation method of English grammar by Part-of-Speech POS tags and specific words as units and the semantic relations of the units. In addition, the calculation method for estimating understanding degree of the student and the learning strategy for generating the next exercise proposed regarding the understanding degree of student and the relations of grammar rules.

C-test vs. Multiple-choice Cloze Test as Tests of Reading Comprehension in Iranian EFL Context: Learners' Perspective

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.

Textual Glosses, Text Types, and Reading Comprehension

Studies conducted in the field of second language (L2) learning have revealed that the impact of gloss types on reading comprehension is an issue of debate. The present study investigated this issue across narrative and expository texts. The glosses applied in this study included single gloss in participants’ first language (SL1G), single gloss in participants’ second language (SL2G), and multiple-choice gloss (MCG) in participants’ L2. A total of 108 undergraduate students majoring in English Literature and Translation at the University of Kashan in Iran read the texts under three conditions: SL1G, SL2G, and MCG. After reading, participants answered a multiple-choice (MC) reading comprehension test. To control the participants’ reading proficiency, an MC cloze test was given to them a week later. One-Way ANOVA and follow-up post hoc Tukey’s HSD tests (p<.05) showed that the most facilitative gloss type for the participants’ reading comprehension of the narrative and expository texts were SL1G and SL2G respectively. When surveyed, participants showed their preference for marginal glosses in L2.

Evaluation of the Simple View of Reading in an EFL Context: An Additive or Product Model?

This study attempted to find the relationship among decoding skill (DS), reading comprehension (RC) and listening comprehension (LC) in an EFL context to evaluate Gough and Tunmer's (1986) Simple View of Reading (SVR) in which Reading Comprehension = Decoding × Listening Comprehension. To this end, 85 female students studying English as a foreign language (EFL) at a Language Institute in Shiraz were asked to participate in the study. The sample was homogenous with regard to their English level. Through a multiple-choice cloze test, multiple-choice listening test and a word and non-word reading assessment, RC, LC and DS were measured respectively. To find out if reading comprehension equals DS × LC, correlation analysis and simple linear regression analysis were used. The results supported the validity of the simple view of reading

Recommendation for English multiple-choice cloze questions based on expected test scores

When students study for multiple-choice cloze tests as the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC), they tend to repeatedly tackle questions of the same type. In such situations, students can effectively solve questions related to the

Progress Monitoring in Grade 5 Science for Low Achievers

This article presents procedures and results from a 2-year project developing science key vocabulary (KV) short tests suitable for progress monitoring Grade 5 science in Texas public schools using computer-generated, -administered, and -scored assessments. KV items included KV definitions and important usages in a multiple-choice cloze format. A KV and item database was constructed for all Grades 3, 4, and 5 science student outcomes by scrutinizing basal and supplemental instructional materials used in Texas schools. The resulting 620 KV terms and 1,800 test items were formatted for computer administration in computer-generated probes.This study examines results from equivalent KV-science probes, administered to students with special needs on a weekly basis, over 5 or 6 weeks. It also compares results from KV probes versus standard multiple-choice science items in simpler pre—post administration. Results encourage further development of KV-based probes for progress monitoring in the content area of science.

Comparison between CBT and PBT: Assessment of Gap-filling and Multiple-choice Cloze in Reading Comprehension

The main purpose of the article is to determine whether there is equivalence between computer based test and paper based test. A lot of comparable research has been conducted to investigate the equivalence between two test formats, but their results are inconsistent, which causes controversy in the field of research. Moreover, many of these studies are conducted in the other countries, especially in the USA, but few in China. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct the respective research in the Chinese context. Based on Honaker’s two standards for equivalence of computer based test and paper based test, the experiment is made to explore the equivalence between CBT and PBT.CBT; PBT; psychometric equivalence; experiential equivalence