Cloze procedure
- 1. What Is a Cloze Procedure? The cloze procedure is a reading comprehension activity in which words are omitted from a passage and students are required to fill in the blanks. This procedure is incredibly useful in reading instruction because it can be easily done by any teacher and provides valuable reading comprehension information. Creating a Cloze Passage There are several different methods used to create cloze passages. All of these methods entail finding a passage that is at the target student's reading level and deleting words in a pattern. The range for deleting words depends on reading ability and what kind of skills you wish to assess. You can delete every five words up to every 10-20 words or more. If you wish to assess a more specific skill, such as specific vocabulary words, you can select a passage and delete only those vocabulary words. Let's look at an example of a cloze passage by converting the information we just discussed into text. Notice how just about every fifth word has been deleted. There are several different (blank) used to create cloze (blank). All of these (blank) entail finding a passage (blank) is at the target (blank) reading level and deleting (blank) in a pattern. The (blank) for deleting words (blank) on reading ability and what (blank) of skills you wish to (blank). You can delete every (blank) words up to every (blank) words or more. If (blank) wish to assess a more (blank) skill, such as (blank) vocabulary words, you can (blank) a passage and delete (blank) those vocabulary words. Assessment Using Cloze The cloze procedure is commonly used in reading assessment because it requires students to use different reading comprehension skills to fill in the blank. For example, if a cloze procedure was used to assess vocabulary, students would need to use their knowledge of the vocabulary words as well as context clues in the passage to determine which word should be used to fill in the blank. Assessment using the cloze procedure is less concerned with fluent student reading and more with targeting specific reading comprehension skills. Reading a cloze passage requires students to look to either side of a blank to figure out which word needs to be used to fill in the blank. This flexibility means that the cloze procedure can be used to assess a variety of skills.
- 2. A Cloze Test (also called the "cloze deletion test") is an exercise, test, or assessment consisting of a portion of text with certain words removed (clozetext), where the teacher asks the participant to restore the missing words. Cloze tests require students to understand context and vocabulary to identify the correctwords that belong in the deleted passages of a text. EXAMPLE: A language teacher may give the followingpassage to students: "Today,I went to the ________andbought some bread and peanut butter. I knew it was going to rain, but I forgot to take my ________,andgot weton the way." The teacher instructs the students to fill in the blanks with words that they think best fits the passage. Both context in language and content terms are essential in most cloze tests. The first blank is preceded by "the"; therefore, a noun, an adjectiveor an adverb must follow.However,a conjunctionfollowsthe blank; the sentence would not be grammatically correctif anything other than a noun were in the blank. The words "bread and peanut butter" are important fordeciding whichnoun to put in the blank; "supermarket" is a possible answer; depending on the student, however,the first blank could either be store, supermarket, shop or market, while umbrella or raincoat fit the second. The Development of the Cloze Test Research indicates that teachers at many elementary schools require their students to read books and materials that they often struggle to read. This conditionis largely based on the graded system whichassumes that all children learn all things at virtually the same time. It seems imperative that teachers choosematerials whichmatch the students' reading skills. To accomplish this, the first task is to determine the appropriateness of reading materials for various students. Tosome extent, the standardized achievement tests offeredat least once a school year in most school systems, provide such information. However,the results of such tests do not provide a reliable index of reading success in various materials. The reasons for this are: 1) Achievement tests are based on limited samples; they cannot predict achievement accurately in specific materials whichdraw on varied concepts, sentence patterns, etc. 2) Achievement tests are most reliable in the middle ranges of achievement. They oftenmislead in measuring the achievement of those in the lower reading ranges. Because standardized tests cannot accurately determine the suitability of given reading materials, many reading authorities suggest informal tests of the involvedmaterials. The best test of reading skill relies on the student's ability or inability to read the given material.
- 3. Thus, if a sixth grade teacher wishes to find out which students can read and comprehend the sixth grade geography text, the teacher must: 1. Direct each student to read a specified portion of the text. 2. Direct the student to demonstrate some degree of understanding. A student can do this by answering questions about the selection. This method of testing materials is generally called "informal reading inventory testing." In most instances the label is equated withthe task of finding pupils' reading levels by asking them to read a series of increasingly difficultselections (followedby comprehension questions). Students in the earlier stages of reading development read the various materials both orally and silently, while higher level students read silently beforeanswering the questions. Although potentially valuable, "informal reading inventory testing" involvesmany qualitative decisions on the part of the teacher, such as: 1) Oral Reading Mute are oral reading errors? What are the maximum number of oral reading errors that can be permitted? How fluent should the oral reading be? How do youdetermine fluency? 2) Silent Reading What is a reasonable amount of time to read the given selection? 3) Comprehension What are the most important elements that the student should remember about the selection? To whatextent are the questions relevant to the main elements of the selection? The quality of judgments in the above depends upon very sophisticated judgments. In fact,the judgments can be so sophisticated that reading experts suggest that teachers may make completely inappropriate judgments if they use the prevailing error marking systems. At this point the question many teachers ask is, "If teachers cannot depend upon achievement tests or their ownobservations to determine the suitability of reading materials fordifferent children, what, then can they use?'" We have twovery differentways. Several diagnostic reading test authors have developed tests that can more accurately predict the proper instructional level of texts, and others have presented data to indicate that their special instruments willpredict more accurately than achievement tests.
- 4. Another way has been seen in the "clozetechnique" procedure as developed by JohnBormuth (1967). In the "ClozeTest Procedure,"the teacher instructs students to restore omitted words (usually every fifth word)in a reading passage. Based on reviewing students' restored words fromthe text passages, the teacher can determine a more accurate level of comprehension. Because the the Botel Readability Formula and Spache Readability Formula (as well as other formulas) suffer fromthe same limitations as achievement tests, it appears that their usefulness to determine the appropriateness of reading material is limited. The Cloze Test is different. Devoid of such restraints and geared to the exact material, the Cloze Test Procedure adds more value to determine the readability of any selected text forany student. Wilson L. Taylor introduced the term "clozeprocedure" in 1953 and thoroughly researched the value of closure tasks as predictors of reading comprehension. Basic to the procedure is the idea of closure wherein the reader must use the surrounding context to restore omitted words. Comprehension of the total unit and its available parts (including the emerging clozewrite-ins) is essential to the task. To use the Cloze Test Procedure to score material, follow this protocol: Administration 1. Omit every 5th word, replacing it with a blank space forthe student to write in the answer. 2. Instruct students to write only one wordin each blank and to try to fill in every blank. 3. Guessing is encouraged. 4. Advise students that youwill not count misspellings as errors. Scoring 1. In most instances, the exact wordmust be restored. 2. Misspellings are counted as correctwhen the response is deemed correctin a meaning sense. Validating the effectivenessof the Cloze Test as a measure of readability and comprehension is interesting because of: (1)the waysin whichreading comprehension is scored; and (2) the almost universal finding of high correlations between clozeand other prediction instruments. Initially Taylor(1953) compared cloze score rankings of passages of varying difficulty with readability rankings of the same passages by two common readability formulas, Dale-Chall and Flesch formulas. The passages were similarly rank ordered by each technique. The Cloze Test scored the readability of very difficulttext passages more accurately than the Dale-Chall and Flesch formulas.
- 5. Modality Testing The techniques of meta-analysis were used to arrive at a quantitative synthesis of findings from 39 studies searching for aptitude-treatment interactions. The primary findings indicated that neither modality assessment nor modality instruction were efficacious.When subjects were assessed to ascertain modality preferences, considerable overlap was found between groups exhibiting a modality preference and those not exhibiting such a preference. Modality preference groups were not as clearly differentiated as assumed. With respect to instruction, no benefits accruedto subjects taught by methods matched to their modality preferences. When compared to control subjects receiving no special instruction, the subjects in the modality preference groups receiving differential instruction exhibited only modest gains. In sum, no empirical support was rendered for the modality model. It was concluded that, although intuitively appealing, the modality model should be dismissed and effortsbe directed at enhancing general instructional methodology. Assessment Probes Today'selementary teachers are faced withmany different types of learners in their classrooms. Students come to the science classroom with a wide range of out-of-schoolexperiences, different cultural and economic backgrounds, languages, learning styles, and cognitivelevels that affecthow they engage in and learn science. Page Keeley, developer of the science formative assessment probes forthe "UncoveringStudent Ideas" series, tries to anticipate and address the needs of all learners who might be using the probes. However, each classroom is unique and teachers are encouraged to modify the probes to best address the diversity in their ownstudent populations. This column describes some of the features of formativeassessment probes designed to broadly address all students as well as ways teachers can make further modifications to meet the diverse needs within their ownclassrooms.