The effectiveness of cloze tests in assessing the speaking

Abstract

This study investigated the effectiveness of cloze tests in assessing the speaking and writing skill levels of Manisa Celal Bayar University Preparatory School students. The study also tried to find out whether there are differences in the success levels of such tests in assessing speaking and writing skill levels when the conditions are changed. It examined different text selection, deletion methods and scoring methods to determine whether there are any differences in the success levels. The study was conducted in Celal Bayar University Preparatory School with 60 intermediate (+) students from three different classes. The students were tested using six different cloze tests. The cloze tests differed in text selection and deletion methods. These cloze tests were then scored using two different scoring methods. The scores were correlated with the speaking and writing scores of the students to check whether there is a correlation between the cloze test results and the students‟ writing/speaking scores. The correlations were also compared to each other to find if there are differences in the success levels of the tests‟ ability to assess the different skills. The results pointed out a possible use of cloze tests in testing speaking/writing. Although strong correlation was found between writing/speaking tests and cloze tests, the numbers indicate that the cloze tests might not be adequate measuring tools for the productive skills on their own. This suggests a supportive use of cloze tests. The differing correlations also suggested a careful use of such tests. In conclusion, cloze tests can be valuable tools, if used correctly, to help assess speaking and writing skills. These results mostly mean that more studies should be conducted on the subject. The differences between the correlations of different preparation and scoring methods suggest that there might be some chance to further refine the cloze tests to make them more appropriate as alternative testing methods.