Klein-Braley, C. (1997).  C-tests in the context of reduced redundancy: an appraisal.  Language Testing, 14(1), 47–84.

 

Population:   Students at the University of Duisburg, Germany.

Size:            81 completed the entire battery of tests. The control criteria are DELTA scores.

Details:       The purpose of this large-scale comparison of the various reduced redundancy approaches was to compare the university’s own C-test to the rest of the tests. The battery of tests consisted of 2 cloze tests, 1 four-part C-tests, 2 four-choice cloze tests, 2 cloze-elide tests, and the dictation portion of the DELTA test.

CLOZE1 used the fixed 7th word deletion rate; CLOZE2 deletions were made using a random number table. (Exact scoring was used. Each had 20 items.)

The 100 possible points on the C-test were derived from four short paragraph-style texts with 25 mutilations each (C1, C2, C3, & C4).

Of the multiple-choice cloze tests (MC1 & MC2), one used the 26 blanks specified by Jonz (1976); the other used the 22 blanks format used by Manning in his (1986) study.

The cloze-elide tests (CE1 & CE2) used ANIMAL MIGRATION and ARCHEOLOGY, which were also taken from Manning’s (1986) study.

The DELTA dictation test (DICT) allocates 50 points, then subtracts 1 point for each erroneous deletion or non-deletion.

Conclusions:     Difficulty rankings (P = .5 is ideal):        (high > low)     

                        C-TEST (.52), ALLCE (.46), ALLMC (.60), ALLCLOZE (.27)

                        Reliability (KR-21):      (high > low)      DICT (.94), DELTA (.93),

                        C-TEST (.85), ALLCE (.75), ALLCLOZE (.66), ALLMC (.55)

                        Rank of Usability (performance and ease of use):  (high > low)

                        C-TEST, DICT, ALLMC, and ALLCLOZE tied with ALLCE.

                        Ease of construction: (high > low)

                        DICT, ALLCLOZE, C-TEST, ALLCE, ALLMC.

                        Scoring: (high > low) ALLMC, C-TEST, ALLCLOZE, DICT.

                        Overall: (high > low) C-TEST followed by DICTATION.

                       

Comments:  To enhance the areas where the C-test ranked behind, I created ClozeOnline™ which now offers instant construction and scoring. Create your own at clozeonline.us.