This study aimed to investigate the association between syntactic awareness and discourse-level reading comprehension in 136 Hong Kong Chinese children. These children, aged 11, from a longitudinal study, were administered a set of cognitive and linguistic measures. Partial correlational analyses showed that children's performances in two…

Recent investigations challenge the construct validity of sustained silent reading tests. Performance of two groups of post-secondary students (e.g. struggling and non-struggling) on a sustained silent reading test and two types of cloze test (i.e. maze and open-ended) was compared in order to identify the test format that contributes greater…

Presents evidence from a large sample of reading test scores for the validity of cloze-based assessments of reading comprehension for the discourse typically encountered in introductory college economics textbooks. Notes that results provide strong evidence that appropriately designed cloze tests permit valid assessments of reading comprehension…

Reports on two studies of the effect of different typographic settings on the speed and accuracy of responses to cloze procedure reading tests. Concludes that in-text responding and dashes produce significantly higher scores. (SRT)

Describes an experiment that studied reading comprehension of French. Concludes that an advance organizer (introductory material to a reading selection) helped lower-ability students and aided the comprehension of more complex texts. (SRT)

Concludes that relevant context had an effect on particular cloze items, as the positioning of items at the end of the natural passages did facilitate their prediction. (FL)

Confirms that in cloze testing, it is unnecessary to use standard size spaces and reveals a high correlation between synonymic scoring and verbatim scoring. Indicates also that a specific probability concepts test is comprehensible and readable by the great majority of students for whom it was devised. (FL)

Details a cross-cultural study of cloze procedure and comprehension conduced in Japan, Canada, Sweden, and the United States with 10- and 11-year-old children. Concludes that cloze procedure is a valid and reliable measure of certain aspects of reading comprehension in all the linguistic and cultural areas sampled. (FL)

Reports results of cloze tests in reading and listening given to Scottish children. Indicates a continuing interdependence of reading and listening ability up to age 14. Concludes that success in comprehending narratives may not necessarily transfer to comprehending information. (RS)

Investigates the usefulness of using grammatical cohesion to evaluate the macro- or discourse-level, and the micro-level reading comprehension of English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) students. Finds a relationship between anaphora and coherence that contributes to reading difficulty. (MG)