The Effectiveness of Using Cloze Test in Assessing Reading Skill of Iranian Advanced EFL Learners

This study was an attempt to investigate the effectiveness of using cloze tests in assessing the reading skill of Iranian advanced EFL learners. The participants were 100 male and female EFL learners attending a language institute in Naeen, Isfahan. In fact, there were four groups: two groups as experimental groups, and two others as control groups with 25 students each. The participants of all four groups were pretested through the reading skill section of Cambridge Michigan ECPE Cloze test (2012). This was followed by the instructional period. In each session during the instructional phase, which lasted for 10 sessions, the students in the experimental group received a cloze test passage of the standard format. Those in the comparison group received the same level passages in full, followed by some multiple-choice comprehension questions. After the instructional period was over, the students in all groups were post-tested to identify changes in reading skill. The data analysis in this study was carried out through MANCOVA. The results of the analysis show that the main effect of testing in this study is significant. It means that, regardless of the method, gender and age, there was a significant difference in pre-test and post-test measures of reading skills among the 100 participants. But the difference was not a result of the education method, gender or age of learners and their interaction, and it was enough for the researcher to safely accept the null hypothesis.

Keywords:

Cloze test , Reading skill , Iranian advanced EFL learners