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Do children know how to read mathematics books? Ordinarily not. Thus, teachers are faced with the alternatives of conti nually reading and interpreting instructional materials for their pupils, using such materials only as sources of teaching ideas and exerci es, or teaching children to read mathematics.
A method of adapting cloze tests for use with mathematical passages is discussed. The validity of the cloze procedure as a measure of comprehensibility and difficulty of mathematical selections is tested. For 5 passages, 25 cloze tests and 5 comprehension tests were administered to subjects, grades 7 through 10. Results supported the hypotheses that adapted cloze tests are reliable and valid predictors of comprehensibility and that rankings of cloze tests are reliable. Evidence supports the hypothesis that cloze tests are valid measures of difficulty, but this conclusion needs further verification due to the number of passages used in the study.
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