Cloze test
A cloze test (also cloze deletion test or occlusion test) is an exercise, test, or assessment in which a portion of text is
The word cloze is derived from closure in Gestalt theory. The exercise was first described by Wilson L. Taylor in 1953.[1]
Words may be deleted from the text in question either mechanically (every nth word) or selectively, depending on exactly what aspect it is intended to test for. The methodology is the subject of extensive academic literature;[2] nonetheless, teachers commonly devise ad hoc tests.
Examples
A language teacher may give the following passage to students:
Today, I went to the ___________ and bought some milk and eggs. I knew it was going to rain, but I forgot to take my ________, and ended up getting wet on the way.
Students would then be required to fill in the blanks with words that would best complete the passage. The context in language and content terms is essential in most, if not all, cloze tests. The first blank is preceded by "the"; therefore, a
could fit the second. A possible completed passage would be:Today, I went to the supermarket and bought some milk and eggs. I knew it was going to rain, but I forgot to take my umbrella and ended up getting wet on the way.
Besides use for testing linguistic fluency, a cloze test may also be used for testing factual knowledge, for example:
________ is the anaerobic catabolism of glucose.
Possible answers would then include lactic acid fermentation, anaerobic glycolysis, and anaerobic respiration.
Assessment
The definition of success in a given cloze test varies, depending on the broader goals behind the exercise. Assessment may depend on whether the exercise is objective (i.e. students are given a list of words to use in a cloze) or subjective (i.e. students are to fill in a cloze with words that would make a given sentence grammatically correct).
I saw a man lay his jacket on a puddle for a woman crossing the street. I thought that was very ______.
Given the above passage, students' answers may then vary depending on their vocabulary skills and their personal opinions. However, the placement of the blank at the end of the sentence restricts the possible words that may complete the sentence; following an adverb and finishing the sentence, the word is most likely an adjective. Romantic,
. Using those answers, a teacher may ask students to reflect on the opinions drawn from the given cloze.Recent research using eye-tracking has posited that cloze/gapfill items where a selection of words are given as options may be testing different kinds of reading skills depending on the language abilities of the participants taking the test.
A number of the methodological problems pointed out by researchers regarding the open-ended type cloze item (readers must supply a correct word from long-term memory, how to score acceptable responses that are not the exact replacement, etc.) can be solved by the use of carefully designed multiple-choice cloze items. See sample test and practice activity from a pilot study in a rural Latin American community.[4] Mostow and associates also showed how this approach is both practical and informative.[5]
Implementation
In addition to the usage in testing, cloze deletion can be used in learning, particularly
Cloze deletion can also be applied to a graphic organizer, wherein a diagram, map, grid, or image is presented and contextual clues must be used to fill in some labels.[6] In particular, when learning an image-heavy subject, such as anatomy, a user of Anki may employ an image occlusion to occlude parts of an image.[7]
Comparison to other testing methodologies
Glover, 1989 compared different forms of recall and their effectiveness after time passed for forgetting to occur. Glover referred to cloze tests as cued recall, which was found to be less effective than free recall testing (generic cue was given to pupil, the pupil was expected to recall all they knew), but more effective than recognition tests.[8]
Natural language processing
Cloze test is often used as an evaluation task in
See also
- Communicative competence
- English language learning and teaching
- Form letter
- Mad Libs
- Sentence completion tests
References
- S2CID 206666846.
- ^ Sachs, J.; Tung, P.; Lam, R. (1997). "How to Construct a Cloze Test: Lessons from Testing Measurement Theory Models". Perspectives. 9. City University of Hong Kong.
- .
- ^ Chireac, S-M.; Francis, N. & McClure, J. (2019). “Awareness of form and pattern in literacy assessment: Classroom applications for the first and second language.” The Reading Matrix, 19 (1), 20—34.
- ^ Mostow, J.; Huang, Y.-T.; Jang, H.-J.; Weinstein, A.; Valeri, J. and Gates, D. (2017). Developing, evaluating, and refining an automatic generator of diagnostic multiple-choice cloze questions to assess children’s comprehension while reading. Natural Language Engineering, 23, 245–294.
- JSTOR 20000851.
- ^ "Image Occlusion Enhanced for Anki 2.1 (alpha) - AnkiWeb". ankiweb.net. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
- ^ Glover, John. "The "Testing" Phenomenon: Not Gone but Nearly Forgotten" (PDF). Journal of Educational Psychology: 5, 6.
- ^ "Question Answering in NLP".
- ^ "Language Models as Knowledge Bases?" (PDF). Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing.
- S2CID 186206974.
- ^ "Story Cloze Test and ROCStories Corpora".
More Information
- JSTOR 389444.
- McCray, Gareth; Brunfaut, Tineke (November 2016). "Investigating the Construct Measured by Banked Gap-fill Items: Evidence from Eye-tracking". Language Testing. 35: 51–73. .