A Comparative Study on C-test vs. Cloze Test as Tests of Reading Comprehension

Since its introduction to the testing world by Taylor in 1953, cloze tests have been widely used for measuring reading comprehension. But in 1982, Klein and Braley by criticizing cloze procedure, they introduced their newly developed testing procedure, C-test, which resolved the cloze tests deficiencies. After that, C-test has been used for measuring reading comprehension and language proficiency while cloze procedure also has continued his popularity. However, little research has done on the effectiveness of these two tests as reading tests. The present study aims to investigate the effectiveness of cloze test vs. C-test as measures of reading comprehension. To this end, one traditional C-test and one fixed ratio (n=7) multiple-choice cloze test prepared from reading passages with similar readability level. The subjects of the study were 27 female EFL advanced learners. Contrary to the finding of previous research, the results of the study revealed that multiple-choice cloze is a better measure of reading comprehension. The estimated correlation between these tests was 0.38. The implications of the finding and suggestions for more studies are discussed within a foreign language testing context.