DOCUMENT RESUME FL 024 804 ED 411 702 El-Koumy, Abdel Salam A. AUTHOR Effect of Cloze Instruction in EFL Listening Comprehension. TITLE 1997-00-00 PUB DATE NOTE 16p. Research (143) Reports PUB TYPE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. EDRS PRICE Achievement Gains; Class Activities; Classroom DESCRIPTORS Communication; Classroom Techniques; *Cloze Procedure; Comparative Analysis; Cooperative Learning; *Discussion (Teaching Technique); *English (Second Language); Instructional Effectiveness; Language Tests; *Listening Comprehension; Second Language Instruction; Testing ABSTRACT This study tested the effectiveness of the cloze procedure, used aurally, to teach listening comprehension in English as a foreign language (EFL). Subjects were the classes of two teachers (n=74, n=75); one teacher taught using the aural cloze procedure, and the other taught using conventional listening instruction techniques. In aural cloze instruction, the teacher would read the cloze text aloud; at the end of sentence, students worked cooperatively in small groups to supply the deleted words and participate in teacher-led discussions about the various possible answers. In conventional instruction, students were read the entire text aloud, then answered questions orally or in writing, matched sentences with pictures, or drew or completed a map or picture. Comparison of pre- and posttest results for both groups reveals that the aural cloze treatment group performed better than the conventional treatment group after instruction. The pretest/posttest is appended. Contains 36 references. 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Introduction feasibility of using the doze procedure Over the last two decades attention has been directed towards the comprehension skills. A plethora of articles have appeared as a teaching technique for developing the doze procedure as a extolling the instructional virtues of this technique. In an article entitled "Using procedure as follows: 1) teaching technique," Radice (1978: 201-203) summarizes the advantages of this immediate knowledge of results, 4) feedback to the ease of preparation, 2) ease of administration, 3) of grammatical difficulties. teacher, 5) suitability for group correction, 6) flexibility, and 7) separation Richardson (cited in Theoretical support for the doze procedure as a teaching technique also comes from Bastidas 1989: 91) who states that: The doze procedure provides both the teacher:and the pupil with anew and stimulating doze procedure coupled with the way to acquire and apply skills. The myriad uses of the simplicity of construction makes it a very useful tool for each classroom. Gefen (1979: 123) gives farther support for the doze procedure as a teaching technique. He writes: completion exercise: it is an aspect of a doze passage is far more than a complex ... controlled composition (oral or written) and demands of the learner a more creative approach to language learning and language use as well as an involvement with the passage as a whole.... Supporting Gefen's view, Lev and Miluse Soudek (1983: 336-337) state that: O ba exercise in a variety of teaching Whether used in language testing or as a versatile situations, the doze procedure aims at a multitude of abilities (see, e. g. Brown 1980: 3 214) that constitute the learner's communicative competence in a second language. It BEST COPY pAILABLE L characterize the addresses the lexical, semantic, and syntactic inter-relationships which of unique structure of a language. In this respect it reflects both the Gestalt concept view of language as a system comprising integrated subsystems, as wholeness and the espoused particularly by Prague school of structuralists. technique A final advantage, noted by Seifeddin (1988: 235), is that the doze procedure as a teaching helps teachers to diagnose and overcome the difficulties learners encounter. Despite the many advantages of the doze procedure as a teaching technique, some ELT specialists have a bias against using this technique in language teaching in general. One reason for the bias against this is difficult to process even if it is easy to create (Gillingham and Garner 1992: 235). technique is that it it does not rely directly on higher levels of text comprehension such as Another reason that is intersentence and paragraph comprehension (loc. cit.). In summary, the controversy among language teaching,theorists, regarding the effectiveness of the doze this area to prove or disprove procedure as a teaching technique, makes research urgently needed in existing theories. Review of empirical literature Previous literature has mainly focused on using the doze procedure for teaching reading comprehension and Bayne 1977, g., Binkly 1975, Cox 1974, Culhane 1973, Faubion 1972, Guscott 1972, Paradis (e. Pepin 1974, Rhodes 1973, Whitmer 1975, Yellin 1978). However, only two studies involved the use of the doze procedure as a teaching technique in the area of listening (Hasson 1981, Kennedy and Weener 1973). Hasson (1981) investigated the effectiveness of aural doze as an instructional technique in improving kindergarten children's vocabulary and listening comprehension. The aural doze instruction used in her study involved reading stories aloud to children and having them supply words deleted from /A 3 did not receive instruction in aural doze. the story. The study was designed with a control group which comprehension between students The results revealed no significant differences in vocabulary or listening (1973) investigated the who received aural doze instruction and those who did not. Kennedy and Weener experimental effects of visual and auditory doze training on listening and reading comprehension. One experimental group received training in auditory group received training in visual doze and the other indicated that both the experimental groups performed significantly higher (p<0.05) doze. The findings than the two control groups on both written and aural doze posttests. clear that: 1) very little research has been conducted From the review of the empirical literature, it is relating doze and listening comprehension, 2) there is conflicting evidence on the usefulness of doze as a teaching technique for enhancing listening comprehension, and 3) no studies have been found that involved the use of aural doze as a teaching technique with ESL/EFL students. Purpose of the study of this study was to determine the effect of aural doze instruction on the listening The purpose comprehension of EFL students. Research variables The independent variables in this study were: 1) aural doze instruction, 2) regular listening instruction. In aural doze instruction, the teacher read the doze text aloud. During reading he said the word 'blank' at each deletion. At the end of each sentence, students worked cooperatively in small groups to supply the deleted word and then participated in teacher-led discussions. These discussions focused upon the various particular answer being correct or answers that could be used in a doze blank and upon the reasons for a incorrect within the sentence. In regular listening instruction, students were read the text. They were then 4 questions orally or in asked to show their comprehension in one of the following ways: 1) answering writing, 2) matching sentences with pictures, 3) drawing or completing a map or picture. The dependent variable was EFL students' listening comprehension. Research hypotheses The hypotheses of concern in this study were stated as follows: between the I. There would be no statistically significant difference in the mean scores on the pretest experimental group and the control group. the 2. There would be no statistically significant difference in the mean scores on the posttest between remained in the regular classroom. group which received aural cloze instruction and the group that Teaching materials The seventeen listening texts, which appear in the teacher's manual Welcome to English, Teacher's Book exercises in Welcome to English Workbook 3, were used with the control 3 together with the listening materials and used with the experimental group. The same texts were modified into instructional cloze in developing the aural doze materials. In group. The lexical or rational doze deletion method was used this method, the deletions (one per sentence) were made only for meaning-bearing words such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives as used by Hasson (1973), Kennedy and Weener (1973). This deletion method, as Jongsma (1980: 17) sees it, appears to be "more effective instructionally than semi-random deletion systems such as every-nth word or every-nth noun-verb." Instrument To verify the hypotheses of the study, a listening comprehension test was constructed to be used as a pre- This test comprised four sections (five items in each). All test items were entirely post-test. and independent of the speaking, reading and writing skills so that the testees could score up to their own 5 5 study, its content validity was (see Appendix A). Prior to using the test in the abilities listening and 3 university teachers reviewed the established by the process of expert judgment. Seven inspectors assessed by administering the test to a pilot test items for relevance. Furthermore, the test reliability was coefficient alpha for each set of items. The coefficient alpha for the group (n= 37) and calculating the for the second section was 0.88, for the third section was 0.78, and for the fourth first section was 0.81, internally consistent. section was 0.86. These coefficient alphas indicated that the overall instrument was Procedure assigned to the treatment Before the start of the study, the two participating teachers were randomly session, lasting for three conditions by flipping a coin. After that each teacher went through a training study, all subjects were hours, in the use of the method to which he was assigned. At the beginning of the pretesting, each teacher pretested. The pretest data were then analyzed by using the t-test. Following his classes over a period of six months from October 1994 until taught the seventeen listening texts to by the researcher to March 1995. The two teachers taught from detailed lesson plans that were developed through using the two methods of the study. be taught ensure that the same listening texts would followed the textbook writer's procedures in teaching the other skills teachers both Additionally, continued to visit (speaking, reading and writing). Throughout the duration of the study, the researcher in-class follow-up and coaching. At the end of the study, all subjects were the participating teachers for subjects' responses to the posttest were scored without knowledge of group posttested. Then the affiliation. Finally, the posttest scores were analyzed using the t-test for independent measures. 6 Findings and discussion Pretest results Table 1 The difference in the mean scores between the experimental group and the control group on the pretest Group t-value S.D. N M Experimental 3.47 1.34 74 1.03 Control 3.27 1.10 75 As shown in Table 1, the t-test for the pretest data revealed no significant differences in the mean scores between the experimental group and the control group (t=1.03, p= n. s.). Therefore, the first null hypothesis was accepted. This result may be attributed to the fact that all subjects studied the same textbooks for the same amount of time. This suggests that the two groups of the study were fairly equivalent in their listening comprehension at the beginning of the study. Posttest results Table 2 The difference in the mean scores between the experimental group and the control group on the posttest t-value S. D. Group N M Experimental 12.28 2.58 74 7.01 Control 9.36 2.51 75 7 7 As shown in Table 2, the average mean score for the group exposed to aural doze instruction was The 12.28 (S. D.= 2.58) and for the group exposed to regular instruction was 9.36 (S. D.= 2.51). difference between the two means was 2.92. The obtained t-value for this difference was 7.01 which was statistically significant at the 0.05 level of confidence. Therefore, the second null hypothesis was rejected. 1) aural doze instruction might provide students There are five possible explanations for this finding: with confidence in guessing the meaning of unknown words from the context before panicking or giving the students learn new up in despair, 2) the discussion accompanying the doze practices might help concepts and new labels for these concepts, 3) aural doze instruction might increase the facility of understanding how various words in a sentence fit together to make sense, 4) aural doze instruction might require more participation on the part of the learner than regular instruction, and 5) students might enjoy aural doze instruction more than regular instruction. Directions for future research The following directions for future research are suggested by the study: comprehension. 1. Exploring the effect of random versus selective deletions on EFL listening 2. Exploring the effect of doze instruction with and without discussion on EFL listening comprehension. 3. Exploring the effect of lexical versus syntactic deletions on EFL listening comprehension. 4. Exploring the effect of aural doze instruction for different listening levels. 5. Exploring the effect of word versus sentence deletions on EFL listening comprehension. References Alexander, L. (1977). Question and Answer, Graded Oral Comprehension Exercises. U. K.: Longman Group Ltd. Anderson, J. (1972). The application of doze procedure to English as a foreign language in Papua and New Guinea. English Language Teaching 27: 1. pp. 66-72. 8 technique to improve reading a teaching (1989). The doze procedure as Jesus A. Bastidas, comprehension. A Forum Anthology 4. pp. 90- 94. teaching and testing reading at the intermediate Binkley, J. P.(1975). Cloze procedure in German for 677A-678A. level. Dissertation Abstracts International 36. pp. The Reading Teacher 31. pp. 300-302. Blachowicz, C. L. 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