Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

Publication Date

12-10-1971

Abstract

Testing of oral English competencies in pre­literate children has had two basic problems: tests were either specific to a particular program of instruction or were inefficient in terms of breadth of coverage of the complex language skills required for adequate communication. Cloze Procedure showed promise of efficient sampling of language skills unrelated to any specific instructional program, but was limited by inadequate scoring precision. Clozentropy Procedure in 1968 provided a precise mathematical scoring technique for Cloze Procedure and a valid and reliable measure of the compatibility of the English of foreign university students with that of native university students in written Cloze tests. Thus a major shift has occurred from compliance with Standard English to compatibility between a criterion group and a comparison group resulting in a precise measure which is related more closely to effectiveness of communication than to compliance with arbitrarily determined standards.

The feasibility of the use of Clozentropy Procedure with pre-literate children was the primary focus of this study. It was hypothesized that children of legal age for first grade enrollment could understand and perform the task required in an orally administered Cloze test, that native English speaking children in Albuquerque could cope with the same morphological and syntactical characteristics of English in the testing situation that were used in the first grade classroom, and that an Oral Clozentropy Test of English Proficiency (OCTEP) would distinguish the compatibility levels of proficiency among four ethnolinguistic groups, among individuals within a given group, and among non-Anglo individuals compared with the Anglo criterion group.

Document Type

Dissertation

Language

English

Degree Name

Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy

First Committee Member (Chair)

Miles Vernon Zintz

Second Committee Member

F. Keith Auger

Third Committee Member

David Wayne Darling

Fourth Committee Member

Leroy Condie

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