The Use of the Cloze Procedure as a Strategy for Teaching Content and Vocabulary

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of the cloze procedure when used as a teaching strategy in the content area of social studies. A secondary purpose was to determine the effect of the use of the cloze procedure on classroom attending and motivational behaviors. A treatment and control group were used in a pretest-posttest design. The sample consisted of 28 students (two classes) taught by the same instructor and was equated in terms of reading comprehension, reading achievement, and content and vocabulary. One group was randomly assigned to be the control group and used traditional-comprehension methods to reinforce content and vocabulary. The other class was the experimental group and used a variety of cloze activities to reinforce the same content vocabulary. The students were pretested with a researcher devised content and vocabulary test based on units in the textbook New York the Empire State published by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Those words and concepts which 85 percent of the students had correct were eliminated from the study. In addition the students were pretested with the Degrees of Reading Power Test, a multiple-choice maze test. Upon completion of the 12-week treatment period, students were posttested. The data were analyzed at the .05 level of significance using a series of t tests. The overall mean gains for the treatment group were significant. Teaching with cloze exercises apparently encouraged students in the treatment group to pay closer attention to meaning. It was concluded that utilization of the cloze procedure as a teaching strategy had a positive effect on student attending and answering behavior and a positive change in student motivation in regard to group and independent work. Suggestions for classroom applications and implications for further research were discussed.