A Study of Reading Strategies and Effects of Reading Ability Levels and Text Types on Rational Deletion Cloze Test Performance of EFL University Students

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the effects of reading ability levels and two text types, narrative and expository texts, on the rational deletion cloze test performance and to study the students’ use of reading strategies on their taking the cloze test. One hundred seventy-four first-year university students participated in this study. They were assigned into three groups of high, average and low reading ability. The instruments included a rational deletion cloze test and a reading strategies questionnaire. The interaction effects of reading ability levels and text types on the cloze test performance were found to be nonsignificant. However, each of these two variables had a significant effect on the cloze test performance, with large effect sizes. The uses of reading strategies by the three reading ability groups while working on the cloze test were also found to be significantly different.