Author:
O’Toole John M,Cheng Junyu,O’Toole Gjyn
Abstract
Abstract
This paper provides an example of close analysis of student attempts to fill the gaps that comprise a cloze test. Such analysis may assist diagnosis of the difficulties that groups of students experience with specific text in particular contexts and illustrate the impact of those difficulties.
The paper briefly touches on the international, academic role of English, outlines its contemporary role in universities in the People’s Republic of China and then describes a small quantitative study of student difficulty with specialist English that illustrates the impact of those difficulties on text accessibility.
One hundred and fourteen Chinese undergraduate students completed a 50 item cloze test which was conceptually scored before close analysis of patterns in clear student error.
The impact of the pattern of difficulty that emerged from the Chinese results is illustrated in a number of ways. The rank and proportional difficulty of the identified language features is presented in numerical form and compared with that emerging from previous use of the test in secondary school contexts. The proportional difficulty is then used to guide insertion of words from an unfamiliar language into the base text to provide an indication of the difficulty being experienced by the ‘average’ Chinese undergraduate in reading this passage prepared for a mid-level secondary school audience.
The present case provides the opportunity of ‘proof of concept’ for extension of cloze techniques from holistic estimation of readability to identification of specific features of specialist writing styles that may cause difficulty for particular groups of readers.
The results of this study suggest that such close analysis of error patterns may provide an illuminative lens on student difficulty with specific language styles within English and that, in this particular case, focus on general academic English may not be sufficient preparation for upper level discipline courses that make use of more specific styles.
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Language and Linguistics
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