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.
Of significant challenges encountered in the field of Foreign Language Acquisition (FLA) is finding efficient procedures to make learning more promising, and at the same time-independent. Along with these attempts, the present study tries to make a shift in the usage of the cloze procedure traditionally used for testing reading comprehension. Our aim was to find out whether using a cloze procedure prior to teaching reading comprehension skills prompts EFL students Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) in learning reading comprehension skills across proficiency levels. To that end, applying quasi-experimental design, 380 B.S. students majoring in engineering were selected based on intact classes and randomly divided into control and experimental groups while their proficiency levels determined through their scores on the Cambridge Quick Placement Test. Then, the participants in the experimental group (N=190) received the prepared cloze procedure, whereas those in the control group received the same procedure for teaching reading skills except the cloze before instruction. Both groups received pre-test, post-test, and delayed post-tests. The obtained data were analyzed by SPSS using independent samples t-test to understand the differences between the groups. The results from the tests revealed that using instructional cloze procedure before teaching reading skills has significant effects on participants’ ZPD in all proficiency levels and can broaden their learning. The finding of the present study implies that instead of adhering to the traditional teaching principles and instruments, instructors can use innovative procedures and manipulate traditional methods and tools to facilitate and lengthen learning processes.
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