The current study tries to investigate the particular role familiarity with the genre of the text plays in EFL learners’ performance on two types of tests, i.e. cloze test and C-test. It also attempts to determine whether C-test is a measure of language proficiency like cloze test. The participants of the study were fifty-one intermediate undergraduate students majoring in English Literature at the University of Isfahan. In two sessions, the participants took a battery of measures (a) two newly developed cloze tests of familiar (literary) and unfamiliar (political) genres, and (b) two newly developed C-tests of familiar (literary) and unfamiliar (political) genres. The results of data analysis revealed that familiarity with genre has a significant impact on the performance of EFL learners on both cloze test and C-test. The results further disclosed that there is a significant correlation between cloze test, as a measure of language proficiency, and C-test with the same genre.
Tavakoli M, Ahmadi A, Bahrani M. Cloze Test and C-test Revisited: The Effect of Genre Familiarity on Second Language Reading Test Performance. IJAL 2011; 14 (2) :173-204 URL: http://ijal.khu.ac.ir/article-1-28-en.html