Cloze Tests in English, Thai, and Vietnamese: Native and Non‐native Performance

Oller, John W.; Bowen, J. Donald; Dien, Ton That; Mason, Victor W.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1972.tb00069.x

Cited by 24 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…In other words, native speakers improve more than nonnative speakers when allowed to respond with semantically acceptable answers, but nonnative speakers are benefitted more by a scoring procedure which while insisting on grammatical correctness allows semantic anomalies. This accords with previous findings (Oller et al 1972) that nonnative speakers tend to make more responses which violate semantic constraints.…”

Section: The Scoring Procedures Variablesupporting

confidence: 93%

NATIVE AND NONNATIVE SPEAKER PERFORMANCE ON CLOZE TESTS¹

Alderson

1980

Language Learning

100

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A frequent assumption of proficiency tests for nonnative speakers of a language is that they measure something that native speakers are able to do uniformly well. The cloze procedure is increasingly used to construct proficiency tests for administration to nonnative speakers of English. However, little evidence is available on the question of whether cloze tests are capable of making fine distinctions between native and nonnative speakers. The paper reports on a study comparing the performances of native speakers of English with those of nonnative speakers, on a number of cloze tests constructed by manipulating variables in cloze test design. It is shown that native and nonnative speakers perform similarly on cloze tests with respect to these variables. The results are related to the claim that cloze tests (as distinct from cloze items) measure essentially lower‐order language skills, and it is suggested that the notion of language proficiency needs to be revised. This has major implications for the construction and validation of language tests.

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Section: The Scoring Procedures Variablesupporting

confidence: 93%

NATIVE AND NONNATIVE SPEAKER PERFORMANCE ON CLOZE TESTS¹

Alderson

1980

Language Learning

100

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“…For native Speakers, the cloze can be treated äs a measure of reading comprehension whereas, for nonnative Speakers, it can be viewed äs a global measure of second-language proficiency (Oller, Bowen, Dien, and Mason, 1972). They were asked to restore words to written passages from which every sixth word had been deleted.…”

Section: Language Proficiency Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Study of Language Attitudes

COOPER¹,

Fishman²

1974

International Journal of the Sociology of Language

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Attitüde has served äs a variable in many sociolinguistic studies (for a methodological and topical review, see Agheyisi and Fishman, 1970; for a recent compendium, see Shuy and Fasold, 1973). This has been true in part because attitude is a central concept in the social sciences generally and in part because sociolinguistic phenomena are complex enough to motivate a search for equally complex predictive hypothetical constructs. Thus, for example, language attitude appears äs a catalyst for a sound change (Labov, 1963), a defining characteristic of a speech Community (Labov, 1966), a predictor of second-language achievement (Anisfeld and Lambert, 1961; Lambert, Gardner, Barik, and Tunstall, 1963;Lambert, Gardner, Olton, and Tunstall, 1968), a reflection of interethnic attitudes (Herman, 1961;Lambert, Anisfeld, and Yeni-Komshian, 1965), a determinant of interlingual intelligibility (Wolff, 1959), and a determinant of teachers' perceptions of their pupils' ability (Seligman, Lambert, and Tucker, 1972).While it is not remarkable that language attitude appears äs a variable in sociolinguistic studies, it is surprising that the work of attitude theorists on the one band and the work of sociolinguists on the other should have been conducted in relative Isolation from one another. Sociolinguistic investigators' use of attitude äs a variable has proceeded largely without reference to issues in the theory and measurement of attitudes, and the procedures and data developed by sociolinguists have been largely ignored by attitude theorists. This mutual Isolation is unfortunate because each research tradition can benefit from the other. Sociolinguistic behavior can serve äs a rieh source of data against which attitude theories can be tested. Moreover, some of the attitude measure-1 This article is a revised and expanded version of a paper prepared for the Interna-

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“…However, those design features are so important to this study, and to others like it (cf. Oller et al, 1972, and sequels) that it may be worth the effort to diagram them. Figure 2 does this.…”

Section: ~mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The empirical literature on translation is sparse, but studies by Brislin (1970), Oller et al (1972) and Malakoff and Hakuta (1991), though conducted in various paradigms with different purposes, all provide empirical evidence supporting the universality theory. These studies have involved languages as different as Chamorro, Palauan, English, Spanish, Thai and Vietnamese.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can relatively perfect translation between English and Chinese be achieved?

Xiao¹,

Oller²

1994

Language Testing

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It may be hypothesized that translation is always possible among diverse languages (Lakoff, 1987) or that it is never possible (Givón, 1989). In order to provide empirical evidence, 250 speakers of English and Chinese were tested in randomly selected blocks of 25 subjects each on one version of an original and another of a translated text in their respective native languages. A fixedratio cloze procedure was used deleting every fifth word from two distinct versions over each text so that every word of both texts was clozed exactly once in one of the five versions. English speaking subjects ( n = 125) completed two cloze tests in English: one over the text originally written in English and another over the text translated from Chinese. Chinese-speaking subjects ( n = 125) also completed two tests: one over the text originally written in Chinese, and the other over the translation from English. MANOVA comparisons between originals and translations irrespective of group showed no significant contrast. There was, however, a small but significant ( p < .05) contrast between groups, but none between the passages averaging over the treatment and group. Results support the universality theory (along Peircean lines) and the conclusion that a high degree of translation equivalence is achievable across radically distinct languages and cultural settings.

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Cloze Tests in English, Thai, and Vietnamese: Native and Non‐native Performance

Cited by 24 publications

References 7 publications

NATIVE AND NONNATIVE SPEAKER PERFORMANCE ON CLOZE TESTS¹

NATIVE AND NONNATIVE SPEAKER PERFORMANCE ON CLOZE TESTS¹

The Study of Language Attitudes

Can relatively perfect translation between English and Chinese be achieved?

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Cloze Tests in English, Thai, and Vietnamese: Native and Non‐native Performance

Cited by 24 publications

References 7 publications

NATIVE AND NONNATIVE SPEAKER PERFORMANCE ON CLOZE TESTS1

NATIVE AND NONNATIVE SPEAKER PERFORMANCE ON CLOZE TESTS1

The Study of Language Attitudes

Can relatively perfect translation between English and Chinese be achieved?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

NATIVE AND NONNATIVE SPEAKER PERFORMANCE ON CLOZE TESTS¹

NATIVE AND NONNATIVE SPEAKER PERFORMANCE ON CLOZE TESTS¹