ARE CLOZE ITEMS SENSITIVE TO CONSTRAINTS ACROSS SENTENCES?1

Abstract

To determine whether or not cloze items are sensitive to constraints across sentences, two passages of prose were selected and two types of tests were constructed over each passage. In the sequential type, items were inserted in the normal prose by a standard word‐deletion procedure. In the scrambled type, the sentences of each passage of prose were systematically shuffled. Each cloze item appeared once in the sequential condition and once in the scrambled. The design was counterbalanced for passage and order of testing. Forty‐one native speakers of English and 201 Japanese adults studying English as a foreign language were tested. Each subject took a cloze test over one of the passages in the sequential condition and the other in the scrambled condition. A four‐way analysis‐of‐variance sustained the hypothesis that cloze items embedded in normal prose are sensitive to discourse constraints ranging beyond the immediate limits of a single sentence. There was a significant interaction between level of proficiency and condition indicating that the contrast between the two conditions increases with an increase in proficiency.

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