The Effect of Intersentential Constraints on Cloze Test Performance on Expository and Narrative Material

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the cloze procedure measures reading comprehension. Of particular interest was whether cloze measures integration across sentences, or intersentential comprehension. If cloze measures intersentential comprehension, then randomly disordering sentences in a cloze exercise should negatively affect cloze performance. The specific questions in this study were designed to assess the effect of order of the sentences, structure of the text, prior knowledge, and age/maturity level on the cloze performance of students. The subjects in this study were fourth grade students, seventh grade students, and adults enrolled in university classes. These subjects were given the cloze tests in their normal classroom settings. Each student was given a cloze test and a multiple choice prior knowledge test on the general topic of the cloze test. The sentences in the cloze tests were either sequential or scrambled, the text structure was either narrative or expository, and the two deletion patterns were initiated at either the first word in the sentence or the third word in the sentence. Every fifth word was deleted, and the first and last sentences were left intact. The same words were deleted in the sequential order and the scrambled order of each version of the cloze tests.

Name thesis:degree_name

Educat.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Education

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Mayer, Patricia Williamson

• Education, Reading

Identifier

(UMI)AAI8721708

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/69128