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The validity and applicability of two modified cloze procedures (beginning of the page procedure and "instant" beginning of the page procedure) measured against the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test and equated with the cloze procedure and Fry Readability Graph

University of British Columbia

This correlational study examined the Beginning of the Page Procedure (B.O.P.P) and the "instant" Beginning of the Page Procedure as measures for assessing readability: One hundred ninety-six grade nine students (106 male and 90 female) took part in the study and their scores on the cloze procedure, the B.O.P.P. and the "instant" B.O.P.P. were correlated with the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test Form A - Blue Level (hereafter referred to as the Stanford Diagnostic ). The Stanford Diagnostic was used as the anchor test and the students were randomly assigned to each of the three groups; Analyses included the calculation of means associated with the Stanford Diagnostic scores for each subgroup, and analysis of the variance between sexes within each subgroup. An equivalency table is provided which estimates the Stanford Diagnostic scores for a given cloze procedure, B.O.P.P. or "instant" B.O.P.P. score; Using the Stanford Diagnostic grade score equivalent to 40 percent on the cloze procedure, the readability level of the passage was determined. This was then compared to the readability level estimated by the Fry Graph. Respective correlations of .53 and .67 were found between the B.O.P.P. and "instant" B.O.P.P. with the Stanford Diagnostic suggesting both are good indicators of the students' ability to handle the given passage. Similarly the Fry Graph and the Stanford Diagnostic, grade score equal to 40 percent on the cloze procedure, found the passages to be at virtually the same level of difficulty. All results however, were limited to the passage studied and should not be generalized to other materials. When a significance level of .05 was used no significant difference was found between the male and female performance levels on any of the tests administered.

Text

2010-03-26

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/22629

Educational Studies

University of British Columbia

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