Materials use is a critical yet poorly understood dynamic of language classrooms. This study examines 'materials-in-action,' meaning how materials shape classroom interaction and activity, in a beginning-level French-as-a-foreign-language classroom. The conceptual framework, 'pedagogical ergonomics,' similarly centers on materials-in-action, and…

This article analyzes the instructed learning of the English article system by second language (L2) learners. The Competition Model (MacWhinney, 1987, 2012) was adopted as the theoretical framework for analyzing the cues to article usage and for designing effective computer-based article instruction. Study 1 found that article cues followed a…

This study examined the extent to which 40 students enrolled in upper level foreign language literary/cultural studies content courses showed evidence of incidental language learning over the course of a semester. Students completed a cloze passage and provided both writing and speaking samples at the beginning and end of the semester. In…

Building on previous research, this study examines the elements of the cloze context that affect performance by determining the extent to which item characteristics correlate with item difficulty. (47 references) (LB)

Describes study comparing merits of exact answer, acceptable answer, clozentropy and multiple choice methods for scoring tests. Results show differences among reliability, mean item facility, discrimination and usability, but not validity. (BK)

Presents empirical data concerning the use of the cloze test as a measure of proficiency in English as a second language. (Author/PMP)

Two experiments were designed to see (1) if a cloze procedure is a valid measure of language proficiency (it seems to be) and (2) whether a cloze procedure can distinguish accurately between groups at various instructional levels (it distinguishes levels but the levels overlap). (EKN)

Looks at some of the methods of testing foreign language learning which are closely related to, yet pre-date, Wilson Taylor's cloze procedure. These include the Ebbinghaus Completion Method, which was first reported in 1897 and was used to test mental ability. Describes later modifications of the Ebbinghaus Method. (SED)

Presents study conducted using high school Spanish students to demonstrate that either a cloze test or a redundancy test could be used in place of either the MLA total score or an interview test. (Author/BK)

An investigation was conducted of the use of cloze tests in measuring native English speakers' achievement in four foreign languages, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. The study sought to determine whether the cloze tests separate the achievement scores of students at different levels. (SW)

Examined effects of item characteristics on cloze text performance. Focus was on the relationship between cloze item characteristics and scoring methods. Item characteristics examined were: content/function words; parts of speech; word frequency; number of occurrences of a word in text; alternative answers; syntactic variation; amount of content;…

Examines the relationship between optimal listening rate and reading rate of 56 Japanese college students of English at different proficiency levels. (Author/VWL)

College students (N=180), in first-semester and second-semester Spanish at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, were each given a short text and one of five assessment tasks to determine if comprehension of the subjunctive is necessarily due to prior instruction in its form and use or can be achieved without instruction. Text and…

Discusses the "fill-in" test, explains how to construct it, and gives statistical evidence for its effectiveness in testing English as a foreign language reading comprehension. In addition, a comparison is made between this test and the more conventional multiple-choice and cloze tests, citing the advantages and disadvantages of each.…

A study analyzed the accuracy of Spanish second-language production across three tasks (narrative, multiple-choice cloze test, fill-in cloze test) on three discourse-determined grammatical items (subject pronouns, articles, past tense aspect) among 74 intermediate and advanced college-level learners. Results revealed different rates of accuracy…