Arthur Hughes

Jefferson Yactayo2016 – 2017

Assessment and Foreign Language Teaching According to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages

I. IntroductionII. Varieties of cloze procedure

I. Selected deletion clozeII. Conversational clozeIII.Advice on creating cloze type

passagesIV.Mini-cloze items

III.The C-TestI. DictationII. Mini-partial dictation items

IV.Conclusion

To measure overall ability is needed a test

with a number of different components

reading grammar

listening vocabulary

Final score

This type of test is hardly economical.

The notion of overall ability is related to

the idea that someone can be good

at a language

Techniques based on the idea of

reduced redundancy.

The cloze procedure reduces redundancy.

It is usually to delete a word every seven words.

Objective: to provide a measure of the underlying abilities, its content validity deriving from the fact

that the deletion of every nth word meant a representative sample of the text that was

obtained.

Cloze tests were easy to construct, administer and score.

Results of early research would be a reliable and valid test of candidate´s underlying language abilities.

Unfortunately, cloze could not deliver all that was promised.

Different passages, different results.

The context showed that it rarely extended

far from the gap.

Different results:

Native speakers between students.

The validity of the procedure was thus brought into question.

The fact that deletion of every nth word almost always produces problematic items (impossible to predict the

missing words).There is need to select the words to delete, from the

outset.

A) Selected deletion cloze

These deletions were chosen to provide “interesting“ items.

Native speakers could be expected to provide acceptable responses to all of the items. Acceptable responses are

limited in number.

Scores on cloze passages of this kind in the Cambridge Proficiency Examination have correlated very highly with

performance on the test as a whole.

A) Selected deletion cloze

B) Conversational cloze

It is used to reflect (and hopefully predict) oral as well as written ability.

B) Conversational cloze

B) Conversational cloze

This “conversational cloze“ passage turned out to be a reasonable predictor of the oral ability of overseas

students who had already been in Britian for some time.

It suggests that we should base cloze tests on passages that reflect the kind of language that is relevant for the

overall ability we are interested in.

C) Advice on creating cloze type passages

1. Appropriate level of difficulty.2. Aprropriate style to the kind of language ability being

tested.3. Pseudo-random method of deletion.4. The passage should be tried out on a good number of

comparable native speakers and the range of acceptable responses determined.

5. Clear instructions should be advised.6. The layout of the second test (Ecology) facilitates scoring.7. People to be tested should have several opportunities to

become familiar with the technique.8. Cloze test scores are not directly interpretable.

D) Mini-cloze items

This is an item that represents a brief exchange between two or more people, with just one gap.

D) Mini-cloze items

We can cover just the structures and vocabulary that we want to, and include whatever features of spoken

language are relevant for our purpose.

Disadvantage: the context is very restricted.

This is a variety of cloze.

Instead of whole words, it is the second half of every second word that is deleted.

Advantage: exact scoring is neccesary (native speakers effectively scoring 100 per cent) and shorter passages

are possible.

Disadvantage: it is harder to read than a cloze passage, and correct responses can often be found in the

surrounding text.

A) Dictation

Dictation was usual in the 1960s.

At the end of the decade it was challenged. Examination on dictation tests made it clear that words and word order

were not really given; the candidate heard only a stream of sound which had to be decoded into a succesion of words,

stored, and recreated on paper.

A) Dictation

Advantage: in predicting overall ability listening ability is evolved. It was easy to create, not to score.

Oller recommends that the score should be the number of words appearing in their original sequence. It works quite well when performance is reasonably accurate, but it is

time-consuming.

B) Mini-partial dictation items

Dictation has the same disadvantage as cloze: the passage determines the limits of what can be tested.

Any method presented provide a general estimate of people´s overall language ability.

Because of the considerable recent interest in cloze and ist common use as a learning exercise in its usual multi-

item format, it may be most obvious choice.

Simple gap filling methods (“mini-cloze“ and “mini-partial-dictation“) will give results at least as good as those of

any other method.