NATIVE AND NONNATIVE SPEAKER PERFORMANCE ON CLOZE TESTS¹

Abstract

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.

Effectiveness of Read-aloud Instruction on Motivation and Learning Strategy among Japanese College EFL Students

“…Fourth, regarding the effectiveness of cloze tests, the tests are considered a useful tool for measuring levels of reading comprehension and text readability for native English speakers (Alderson, 1980;Readance, J. E., Balwin, R. S., Bean, T. W., & Dishner, E. K., 1980), as well as for ESL/EFL learners (Aitken, 1977;Bialystok & Howard 1979;Oller, 1976). The most recent study also showed that cloze test practice improved English grammatical accuracy for Iranian EFL learners at the intermediate level (Mashhadi & Bagheri, 2015).…”

“…Since the validity and reliability of the test were supported by numerous researchers (e.g., Darnell, 1968;Jongsma, 1971;Oller, 1972), the tests have been used as a major measurement of overall language proficiency since the 1970s (see Jongsma, 1971;Oller, 1976;Robinson, 1972). There are some opponents who are skeptical of the effects of cloze tests, claiming that the tests only measure the ability to make localized connections in the texts (Alderson, 1980;Porter, 1983;Bachman, 1982 and1985). However, Alderson (1979) and Readance, Balwin, Bean, and Dishner (1980) state that the cloze tests are a particularly valid measure of reading comprehension as well as text readability for native speakers of English, and are one of the most useful tools for assessing reading comprehension level, learning process, and accurate grammatical knowledge of EFL learners.…”

Impact of Maintaining L1 Reading Skills on L2 Reading Skill Development in Adults: Evidence from Speakers of Serbo‐Croatian Learning French

“…Although some researchers consider cloze tests unsuitable as measures of the comprehension of long-range syntactic or semantic relations (e.g., Alderson, 1980;Shanahan, Kamil, & Tobin, 1982), other researchers believe that they reflect a degree of global comprehension beyond the clause or sentence level, as well as knowledge of orthographic, morphological, and syntactic rules (Bachman, 1982;Chihara, Oller, Weaver, & Chávez-Oller, 1977;Jonz, 1990). Proponents have also ad-dressed other criticisms of the cloze procedure regarding inconsistent results and other "technical" problems (see Jonz & Oller, 1994;KleinBraley & Raatz, 1984).…”

The Trait Structure of Cloze Test Scores

“…Using a rational deletion procedure, Anderson (1980) concluded that cloze tests are capable of measuring sensitivity to cohesive relationships across sentences, as well as sentencelevel grammatical structure. In comparing the performance of native and non-native English speakers on cloze tests, Alderson (1980) found considerable variation in native speaker performance, which suggests either that native speakers vary in their ability on lower-level language skills, or that cloze tests measure higher-order skills. Oiler and Conrad (1971) interpret a similar finding as an indication that native speakers do vary in "the ability to negotiate language," which presumably includes higherlevel skills, and conclude that the cloze is a useful measure of this ability.…”