New Horizons in Education

Abstract

This paper details the development and validation of the multiple-choice cloze test for the Hong Kong SAR Government's English language benchmarking initiative. The paper briefly describes the background to and rationale behind the benchmarkin g initiative. It then discusses how well the test worked and the suitability of a cloze test for use with teachers in a high-stakes examination context. The paper describes two cloze tests, set within the Reading Test component of the test battery, which were destined to be used as specimen benchmark test material and prepared for trailing, together with an established anchor test with known values. Efforts were made to include item types which tapped more than mere lexical/grammatical features, e.g., fea tures of discourse and cohesion. The means which emerged on the two cloze tests would appear to indicate that the difficulty levels of the cloze tests trailing for use with teachers are appropriate. Item discrimination figures were also high, indicating t hat item types generally worked well and that the cloze test is able to differentiate teachers of differing abilities effectively.

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