Passage dependent summary cloze : a method to determine the utilization of cohesion in the process of reading comprehension
Date
1981
Authors
MacKenzie, Paul Arthur
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Abstract
The investigation represented a first step in the development of a means for measuring comprehension in reading. One concept , that of passage dependency in reading, can be closely linked with the process of comprehension. A measurement device which therefore utilizes passage dependency may be construed to measure comprehension. This study took a story , summarized it and deleted selected words using a modified cloze procedure. The resultant tests became the Passage Dependent Summary Cloze tests (PDSC).
Subjects were 184 grade six students randomly assigned into two groups , experimental and control. The experimental group read a story related to the tests applied while the control group read an unrelated story. These groups were then randomly assigned to one of three different Passage Dependent Summary Cloze tests: 1) a standard 5th word random deletion pattern test; 2) a teacher ' s intuitive deletion of meaning pattern test and 3) a cohesion deletion test based upon the propositional analysis of Kintsch (1974) and the text analysis of Quillian (1969).
A three way analysis of variance revealed significant differences between the experimental groups performance and the control groups performance for all PDSC tests (p < .001), and high ability readers performed significantly better than low ability readers (p < .001).
A two way analysis of variance· revealed significant differences among the three PDSC tests. Mean percentage differences between experimental and control groups revealed that the cohesion deletion pattern was the most successful in attaining passage dependency.
From the results obtained it would seem that a selective cloze procedure utilizing cohesive elements applied to a summarization of a story can produce a procedure which has the potential to measure comprehension of connected prose.