| Cloze, a widely used item type, has attracted linguists' interests since it was created in 1950s. The research on it experiences three periods, and topics have ranged from validity and reliability of cloze, language proficiency cloze measures to test-takers' cognitive processes. Those studies proved that cloze may assess second language proficiency, and that different categories of cloze may assess different levels of language proficiency. Those studies have nevertheless seldom concerned distractors in MC cloze, which may influence test-takers' performance. By an analysis of data of NMET cloze and protocols of interviews, the present study attempts to explore how distractors utilize the context of a cloze passage to influence test-takers' performance. Results indicated that different categories of distractors may interfere with the performance of test-takers through the various kinds of contexts. Test-takers who chose distractors may trigger similar levels of information-processing in cloze. The distractors of the text and sentence contexts exerted greater influence on test-takers' performance than other distractors did. The results suggest that teachers may design exercises that may help students improve their reading comprehension; test-designers may design distractors in the contexts of sentences and texts so that cloze items may assess test-takers' integrated second language proficiency; test-takers may enhance their reading comprehension to improve their performance in cloze.
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