THE INVESTIGATION OF READING COMPREHENSION TEST AND CLOZE TEST AMONG LEARNERS WHO LEARN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE WITH RESPECT TO THEIR LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY AND GENDER

Abstract

The present study investigates the relationship between Cloze tests and performance on traditional Reading Comprehension tests among EFL learners. There were 315 subjects majoring in English including both males and females taking part in the study. They were junior and senior students from Iran and they have been chosen from the fourth semesters and above. To carry out the study, first, the subjects were randomly selected and their scores based on skills and knowledge components in university achievements tests (listening, structure, reading and writing) from the fourth semesters and above, were employed as the criterion measure to place them in three levels, namely, elementary, intermediate and advanced. Second, the sample of standard tests of Reading Comprehension consist of 54 multiple choice items and Cloze tests consist of 75 multiple choice items with every 7th word deleted were administered. The analysis of the data indicated that there is a vital relationship between EFL learners’ performance on Reading Comprehension and Cloze tests and they had a better performance on Cloze tests than reading Comprehension tests. Moreover, it was found that, the gender of the subjects has significant effect on the overall performance of the subjects on the Reading Comprehension and Cloze test and females student are outperformed males. Furthermore, significant relationships between language proficiency of the subjects’ and their performance on Reading Comprehension and Cloze tests have been reported.