The Study Of Construct Validity Of Cloze Test In CET4 With Verbal Report

Nowadays, the cloze test has become one of the most popular testing formats and has long been used both in classroom and many public large-scale tests in China, such as in CET4. The developers of CET4 believe that cloze test can test the integrative ability of the test taker, especially the textual-level ability. Thereby the test-taker has made every effort to assure that the cloze test have the high validity in testing the learner's textual-level ability by purposely designing every blank to be filled with textual-level information. However, it is not sure whether the test-taker actually employs the textual level information while conducting the test, if not, the construct validity of cloze test will be challenged. Consequently, the empirical study on the construct validity of cloze test is necessary, and the research in this thesis bridges thegap.The present study investigates how good learner and poor learner answer the cloze test of CET4 by verbal reporting in order to examine whether the test can measure text-level reading ability. The results have shown that both good leaner and poor learner employ textual-level information more frequently than other types of information. The verbal protocols have further revealed the differences in the use of different information between the two groups. Although there are some cases that may threaten the test's construct validity, overall the test generates the students' textual-level reading ability, so the test can still be regarded as having a high construct validity.