A Study On English Thinking From The Perspective Of The Cloze Test

As a kind of language practice and test method, the cloze text, known as the obstacle reading, has been widely used in our English teaching and testing. The cloze text is a test of comprehensive abilities, examining not only the integrated use of the basic knowledge, such as vocabulary, grammar, idioms, sentence patterns, collocation, but also the ability of reading comprehension for passages, including the ability to flexibly use the language in specific context, and the ability of correct logic reasoning, comprehensive judgment, analysis and generalization. Thus, the examination of sentence and discourse levels is an important task of the cloze test. However, the ability to deal with sentences and passages is an important characteristic of English thinking, according to professor Yang, which has four features: the connectivity, the structure and restructure, the reflection of memory, and the sequentiality, on the basis of sentence and discourse.Since both the cloze test and English thinking are closely related to the ability to deal with sentences and passages, which is a breakthrough point, the paper, based on the perspective of the cloze test, has tested and researched English thinking ability of the junior high school students in our country with the purposes of exploring the situation of English thinking ability of them, finding the reasons for this situation through the investigation and analysis, and putting forward some suggestions for improving English thinking ability of the junior high school students. At a junior high school in Jinan, Shandong Province, the author has chosen some teachers and students in grade three as the research object, experimented, and researched using methods of questionnaires, interviews, and thinking-aloud. After that, in order to more clearly show the status of English thinking ability of the junior middle school students, the data of survey and experiment is analyzed scientifically through the software EXCEL and the social statistic software SPSS 19.0.Through the theoretical research and the data analysis of investigation and experiment, the author finds that the process of solving the cloze test is closely related to the English thinking ability of junior high school students, and, in addition that the junior high school students are average in performance of the sequentiality, the abilities of the connectivity, the structure and restructure, and the reflection of memory are low. Most of the students don't know the concept of discourse, and their language thinking activity are confined to words, phrases and a single sentence. In the process of solving the cloze test, they usually depend on the translation of words and phrases and grammar analysis to choose the answer, paying little attention to the intersentential relationship, the context, coherence, background information and rhetoric of passages.There are many causes resulting in this situation, one of which is the direct influence of teachers. Through interviewing five English teachers, the author finds these English teachers have basic understanding of examination content of the cloze test and the importance of English thinking. They all think that the main task of the cloze test is to examine students ability of the context and discourse, not just the knowledge of the grammar and vocabulary. And in their opinions, the cloze test is closely connected with English thinking and it is crucial to improve the students English thinking ability. But for how to improve the English thinking ability of junior middle school students, their opinions are unclear, and the relevant tasks are seldom involved in the teaching practice. At the root, home education environment is also to blame.According to the above research results, the author analyzes the current situation of English thinking ability of junior middle school students in our country and puts forward some suggestions for teachers and English teaching about how to improve students English thinking ability, mainly from the following aspects: to strengthen the training of teachers' English thinking ability, to make the students of junior middle schools realize the importance of English thinking ability, and to optimize the design and explanation of the cloze test.