TABLE OF CONTENTS Contents Pages Statement of Authorship Acknowledgements TABLE OF CONTENTS. 1 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS. 4 LIST OF TABLES. 5 LIST OF CHARTS.
6 LIST OF FIGURES. Background of the research. Aims of the research. Significance of the research.
Scope of the research. Structure of the thesis. 10 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. Definitions of testing.
Purposes of testing. Qualities of a good test. Testing reading comprehension. Definitions of testing reading comprehension.
The nature of the reading skills. Types of reading comprehension tests. Subjective and Objective testing. Objective and subjective testing.
The advantages of objective and subjective tests. Relationship between teaching reading and testing reading comprehension. Teaching and testing reading comprehension. Some general descriptions of teaching reading and testing reading comprehension at upper secondary schools in Vietnam.
Overview and definitions of cloze tests. Purposes of cloze tests. Types of cloze tests. Backwash effects of cloze tests on learners.
Relationship between cloze procedure and reading. Cloze procedure measuring reading ability. Cloze tests and reading comprehension. The situation of the use of cloze tests at some upper secondary schools at Dong Nai province.
Paper test examinations. 42 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Findings and discussion .1 Teachers‟ perceptions about using cloze tests to develop students‟ English reading skill. Effectiveness of cloze tests are designed and used by teachers to develop students‟ English reading skill.
Ways to those cloze tests be used more effective. 75 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS. Summary of the findings. What are teachers‟ perceptions about using cloze tests to develop students‟ reading skill?.
How effective are the cloze tests designed and used by the teachers to develop students‟ reading skill. How can those cloze tests be used in a more effective way?. For educational administrators. 80 3 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS MOET : Ministry of Education and Training TOEFL : Test of English as a Foreign Language IELTS : International English Language Test System N : Number of Informants % : Percent 4 LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1: Types of cloze tests teachers often design and use when testing students‟ English reading skill .2: Appropriate time cloze tests can be used in .3: Language skills and language areas can be tested in a cloze test .4: Criteria are focused on when designing a cloze test .5: Topics teachers often use when designing a cloze test .6: How words are manipulated in a cloze test .7: Ways teachers design cloze tests .8: The positive benefits of cloze tests to students.9: The difficulties teachers often encounter when designing a cloze test .10: The disadvantages of using cloze tests .11: Students‟ awareness of influence of cloze tests on reading skill .12: Students‟ feeling when doing cloze tests .13: Students‟ feeling after doing cloze tests .14: Types of cloze tests students want to do.15: Types of cloze tests students feel difficult to do .16: The advantages cloze tests help students .17: The skills students have been involved when doing cloze tests .18: Teachers‟ perceptions about a successful cloze test.
73 5 LIST OF CHARTS Chart 4.1: Teachers‟ awareness of the importance of using cloze tests to develop students‟ English reading skill .2: The inclusion of cloze tests in school examinations .3: Arrangement of function words and content words in designing a cloze test.4: The resources that teachers usually use to design a cloze test .5: Options teachers choose with a multiple choice cloze .6: The advantages of using cloze tests .7: The skills students can develop when doing cloze tests .8: Students‟ feeling before doing cloze tests .9: Students‟ satisfaction with the results of cloze tests .10: The difficulties students often encounter when doing cloze tests. 71 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1: The Testing Continuum 6 ABSTRACT This thesis aims to investigate teachers' perceptions about the design and use of cloze tests to develop students' English reading skill at three upper secondary schools in Dong Nai province. The data were collected by means of questionnaires and interviews conducted with teachers and students the reviews of 10 sample tests currently used at three upper secondary schools in Dong Nai province. The results show that most of the teachers were well aware of the importance of the use of cloze tests for the purpose of developing students‟ English reading skill.
However, the teachers encountered many difficulties in designing and using cloze tests to develop students‟ reading skill. The difficulties ranged from lack of knowledge about cloze procedures, students‟ mixed ability, and lack of time for designing effective tests. It is suggested that teachers need to consult many sources of materials about designing cloze tests so that they could design suitable ones that fit students‟ level of proficiency as well as motivate students in doing cloze tests. In addition, teachers need to provide students with many different kinds of cloze tests such as banked cloze, pure cloze, fixed- ratio cloze, rational cloze, gap- filling, multiple choice cloze, C-test and cloze- elide to bring about students opportunities to be familiar and proficient in various types of cloze tests.
Background of the research In fact, language testing is considered an essential tool for developing language skills. Tests are officially used in many schools to test students' abilities such as finding out progress, encouraging students, discovering learning difficulties, selecting and placing students in the right level, and evaluating their proficiency. Especially, it is also used to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses in learning abilities of the students as well as to know how well they progress in their study. From this practice, we can see the intertwined relationship between language testing and teaching.
Testing helps teachers receive feedback from students and adjust their ways of teaching. According to Harrison (1986), testing is seen as a natural extension of classroom work, providing teachers and students with useful information that can serve each as a basis for improvement. In order to promote testing of learning students' language abilities, teachers should design many kinds of tests such as question and answer tests, true false tests, multiple – choice tests, cloze tests, and matching tests… to evaluate their learning abilities as well as develop students‟ reading skill. Among the tests mentioned earlier, the cloze test is one of the important tests which is officially used in upper secondary classes of English to assess students' reading proficiency as well as develop students‟ reading skill.
In recent decades, many authors have paid much attention to the use of cloze tests. Harrison (1986), for example, believes that the cloze test is a means of assessing the difficulty of a reading text for native speakers and it could be used for assessing the progress of second and foreign language learners. Edge (1993) suggests that cloze tests are proficiency tests which are easy to produce and mark, and have acceptable validity and reasonable reliability. Therefore, cloze tests seem to play a very essential role in developing students‟ reading skill as well as in assessing students‟ proficiency.
Cloze tests are 8 considered as not only a modern technique to assess students‟ proficiency in a wide range of skills like reading, writing based on students‟ ability and writing sub –skills but also a neat tool to help us assess students‟ current levels. Nowadays, cloze tests are widely used in many international large –scale standardized examinations such as TOEFL, IELTS, and examinations at upper secondary schools in Viet Nam such as the one - period tests, the English Graduation exams. However, in Viet Nam in general and at some upper secondary schools in particular, teachers have not used cloze tests effectively and designed suitably for students‟ level to develop their reading skill. Being an English teacher at Hong Bang upper secondary school in Dong Nai province, I observed that cloze tests were used by many teachers with the aims of measuring the achievement of students and the success of the teaching.
However, teachers‟ perceptions about using cloze tests to develop students‟ reading skill are supposed not to be positive and this affects the quality of the tests designed. Therefore, I wish to conduct this study to find out how teachers use cloze tests to develop their students‟ English reading skill at three upper secondary schools in Xuan Loc District. This project is also a good chance for me to explore effective ways of designing and using cloze tests. Aims of the research This project aims to investigate teachers‟ perceptions about using cloze tests to develop students‟ English reading skill at three above-mentioned schools.
It particularly aims to answer the following questions: 1. What are teachers‟ perceptions about using cloze tests to develop students‟ English reading skill? 2. How effective are the cloze tests already designed and used by teachers to develop students‟ English reading skill? 3. How can those cloze tests be used in a more effective way? 1.
Significance of the research As mentioned earlier, this research will investigate teachers‟ perceptions about using cloze tests to develop students‟ English reading skill at three upper 9 secondary schools in Dong Nai province. Hopefully, the research will bring about many benefits for designing and using cloze tests in paper tests as well as examinations in Vietnam in general and at some upper secondary schools in Dong Nai in particular. Moreover, teachers have an overall perception about using cloze tests to develop students‟ reading skill. The research mainly identifies teachers‟ perceptions about using cloze tests to develop students‟ reading skill.
The findings will help upper secondary school teachers design and use cloze tests in a more effective way. Scope of the research The research focuses on an investigation into teachers‟ perceptions about using cloze tests to develop students‟ English reading skill at three upper secondary schools in Dong Nai province. The scope of the study is the learners in the 10th, 11th, 12th form at the above – mentioned schools. Although the project is necessarily limited in scope, the findings are likely to be generalized to similar contexts.
Structure of the thesis This thesis includes five main chapters as follows: Chapter 1 presents the background of the research, the aims of the research questions, the scope of the research and the structure of the research. Chapter 2 provides a fundamental overview of the theoretical concepts relevant to the research, and lead to rationale of the project. Chapter 3 describes research methodology including instruments, the data collection methods, the subjects of the research and data analysis for this research. Chapter 4 reports the findings and discussions after data collections are analyzed.
Chapter 5 gives summary of the research, pedagogical implications and some suggestions for further research. 10 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2. Introduction Firstly, this chapter presents an overview of testing reading comprehension that includes some definitions and the nature of the reading skills. Secondly, the notion of language testing, objective and subjective testing are explained to obtain an insight into purposes of testing, qualities of a good test as well as clarify the terms: objective and subjective testing.
From that, it draws out the relationship between teaching and testing reading comprehension. Thirdly, the notion of cloze tests and the types of cloze tests, marking and backwash effects of cloze tests on learners to clarify the teachers' perceptions about using cloze tests to develop students' reading skill will be then analyzed. Lastly, the chapter gives out the relationship between cloze procedure and reading as well as the situation of the use of cloze tests at some upper secondary schools at Dong Nai province towards the end of this chapter. The chapter also concludes by highlighting the need for this research.
Definitions of testing Henning (1987) states that testing is one form of measurement including all forms of language testing. In fact, many researchers have defined the term "testing" in different ways.