The Cloze Procedure and Proficiency in English as a Foreign Language 论文

摘要

The cloze test has received considerable attention in recent years from testers and teachers of English as a foreign language, and is becoming more widely used in language tests, both in the classroom and in standardized tests. However, most of the research has been carried out with native speakers of English and the results do not produce clear-cut evidence that the cloze test is a valid test of reading comprehension. The article reports on a series of experiments carried out on the cloze procedure where the variables of text difficulty, scoring procedure and deletion frequency were systematically varied and that variation examined for its effect on the relationship of the cloze test to measures of proficiency in English as a Foreign Language. Previous assumptions about what the cloze procedure tests are questioned and it is suggested that cloze tests are not suitable tests of higher-order language skills, but can provide a measure of lower-order core proficiency. Testers and teachers should not assume that the procedure will produce automatically valid tests of proficiency in English as a Foreign Language.