of test-taking strategies for cloze tests and the effects of test-taking strategy

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

This study intends to investigate Taiwanese vocational high school students’ use

of test-taking strategies for cloze tests and the effects of test-taking strategy

instruction on students’ cloze performance. In this introductory chapter, the

background and motivation of the study are first presented. Then, the purpose and

research questions are proposed. In addition, the terms used in this study are defined.

Finally, an overview of the study is provided.

1.1 Background and Motivation

Since 1970s, research and theory in second language education have shifted

focus from examining the methods of teaching to investigating the process of learning

(Purpura, 1999). This shift has stirred considerable interest in the cognitive and

metacognitive factors that underlie learning, and much research has been conducted

on the relationships between learner strategy use and second language learning

processes and products. Also, as strategic behaviors are generally believed to exert a

causal effect on SLA or SL performance, numerous studies to date have focused on

examining the strategies underlying the differential behaviors of successful and

unsuccessful learners (e.g., O’Malley, Chamot, Stewner-Manzanares, Küpper, &

Russo, 1985; Gordon, 1987; Purpura, 1998, 1999; Yoshizawa, 2002; Phakiti, 2003).

These studies have analyzed the type, category, variety and frequency of the learners’

strategy use and have provided a number of taxonomies.

A similar trend has occurred in language testing as researchers have expressed

increasing interest in investigating the cognitive and metacognitive characteristics of

test-takers that may influence performance on language tests, an interest which stems

a concern that a test-taker’s use of strategies may well be a significant factor in test

score variation. A few language testers (e.g., Bachman, 1990; Cohen, 1994; Bachman

& Palmer, 1996; Purpura, 1999) have also proposed models of language ability in

which cognitive and metacognitive factors, i.e., respondents’ strategy use while taking

a test, play a fundamental role. While differences in test-taking strategy frameworks

have resulted in some fragmentation of efforts, there is growing consensus on the

importance of metacognitive strategies in test taking (Cohen, 2006).

In addition to investigation on the relationship between respondents’ language

proficiencies and their test-taking strategies, a small number of studies have focused

on evaluation of the effectiveness of strategy instruction for improving respondents’

performance on high stakes standardized tests. While Forster and Karn (1998) have

provided a set of “should do” strategies intended to help respondents perform better

on such standardized tests as the TOEFL and TOEIC, Tian (2000) has found that

strategy training materials may not necessarily help those who need it the most and

perhaps most benefit those who least need assistance. Thus, lack of empirical

evidence leaves the effectiveness of strategy instruction for improving learners’ test

performance an undecided matter.

Another line of interest in the present study is lower-level proficiency EFL

learners’ performance on cloze tests. A steadily increasing number of studies (e.g.,

Chihara et al., 1977; Bachman, 1982, 1985; Brown, 1983; Chavez-Oller et al., 1985;

Hinofotis, 1987; Jonz, 1991; Greene, 2001; Keshavarz & Salimi, 2007) have viewed

the cloze procedure as an integrative, reliable and effective measure of various

language-related knowledge and abilities, including syntactic or grammatical

knowledge and both lower-level (clausal and sentential) and higher-level

(intersentential and textual) reading comprehension abilities. In Taiwan, cloze tests

have been extensively adopted in exercises and tests in high schools, in the General

English Proficiency Test (GEPT), and in the entrance examinations for colleges,

technological colleges, and senior high schools. The general format of the cloze tasks

used by school teachers and test writers is Multiple-choice Rational Cloze Test, also

called the “Integrative Test” since the test writers wish to measure different language

abilities. As an English teacher in a vocational high school, the researcher in the

present study finds herself spending quite some time designing cloze tasks for quizzes,

and mid-term and mock exams, in order to make the tests integrative enough to tap

students’ different language abilities such as knowledge of vocabulary, phrases,

grammar, text cohesion and collocational competence. Interestingly, these carefully

designed cloze tests have good validity from teachers’ and test-writers’ perspectives,

but for students, cloze tests are challenging and sometimes frustrating, since they are

asked to retrieve the correct words or phrases from immediate or long-range,

extra-sentential context, sometimes even from extra-textual clues. Lacking adequate

knowledge of vocabulary and sentence structure and comprehension, which is often

the case for the low achievers, a large portion of the strategies these students used are

either sheer guesses or surface matching based on perceived test design clues and

their own assumptions, rather than more in-depth inferences, coherence and cohesion

competence, and reading comprehension.

Strategy instruction would be most valuable for students who are not successful

learners, such as low achievers in vocational high schools. Yet, these low achievers

are the very students who may be least motivated to try new strategies, since they may

not have confidence that they are able to learn successfully anyway. O’Malley and

Chamot (1990) suggest that strategy training programs could benefit “from a

motivation component to help get reluctant students over the initial hurdle of learning

to use new strategies” (p. 161). Once students begin to experience some success in

using strategies, their attitudes about their own abilities may change, and thus increase

their motivation and test performance.

Furthermore, O’Malley & Chamot (1990) have found that EFL beginning

learners report more strategies on the average than intermediate or advanced level

students do. It can be concluded from this finding that using more strategies in

test-taking processes does not guarantee better performance. At times, true control

requires the use of a host of strategies. At other times, the use of a limited number of

strategies may indicate genuine control over the item, when these strategies are

well-chosen and are used effectively, as the high-proficiency learners do in response

to a test item. Cohen and Upton (2006) also advise us that it is best not to assume that

any test-taking strategy is a good or a poor choice for a given task. It depends on how

given test takers—with their particular cognitive style profile and degree of cognitive

flexibility, their language knowledge, and their repertoire of test-taking strategies—

employ these strategies at a given moment on a given task. That is, it is the awareness

and effective use of the test-taking strategies in a learner’s mind that counts. Therefore,

test-taking strategy instruction helps to develop learners’ awareness and knowledge of

different strategies and to master skills in using them. It also provides learners with

opportunities to practice using these strategies properly and effectively.

1.2 Purpose and Research Questions of the Study

The present study attempts to complement and extend previous studies as an

empirical evidence of the effectiveness of test-taking strategy instruction for

improving learners’ test performance. It aims to investigate learners’ test-taking

strategy use when completing cloze tasks, and to examine the effects of test-taking

strategy instruction on the participants’ cloze performance.

The following are the research questions in this study:

1. Does test-taking strategy instruction help improve vocational high school low

achievers’ cloze performance?

2. Does test-taking strategy instruction facilitate the participants’ use of test-taking

strategies for cloze tests?

3. What are the participants’ perceptions regarding the test-taking strategy instruction?

4. Are there any difference in the participants’ performance on different types of cloze

deletions?

1.3 Definition of Terms

Terms used in the present study are defined in the following:

Cloze test: Cloze tests employed in the present study are tests constructed through

the rational deletion procedure. In addition, the selected words are deleted based on

Bachman’s (1985) four-category taxonomy, according to the quantity of text required to

cue the successful closure of a blank.

Test-taking strategies: Test-taking strategies are the consciously selected

processes that the respondents use for dealing with language tests. This study adopts

Cohen’s (2006) three-aspect interpretation of test-taking strategies, including

“language learner strategies,” “test-management strategies,” and “test-wiseness

strategies.”

Low achievers: In this study, this term refers to the students whose academic

performance in English fails to meet the requirement set by the school administration.

Such students are usually asked to enroll in a make-up course.

1.4 Overview of the Study

This study aims to explore the effects of test-taking strategy instruction on the

EFL learners’ cloze performance. It is an empirical study with low achievers in a

vocational high school serving as its primary subjects. It also examines students’

responses to this activity. After the introductory chapter, related studies on the issue of

the cloze procedure and its role in language testing, cloze item types in the rational

deletion procedure, research on test-taking strategies and its relationship with cloze

performance, and test-taking strategy instruction are reviewed in Chapter Two. In

Chapter Three, research methods, including participants, the treatment, instruments,

data-collection procedures, and means of data analysis are described. Chapter Four

presents the results of data analysis, along with the discussion of the results. Lastly, in

Chapter Five, a conclusion of this study is presented, including a summary of the

findings, some pedagogical implications, limitations of the study, and suggestions for

further research.