Originally designed to measure reading and passage comprehension in L1 readers, cloze tests continue to be used for L2 assessment purposes. However, there remain disputes about whether or not cloze items can measure beyond local comprehension information, as well as whether or not they are purely a test of reading alone, or if performance can be generalized to broader claims about proficiency. The current study sets out to address both of these issues by drawing on a large pool of cloze items (k = 449) taken from 15 cloze passages that were administered to 675 L1 and 2246 L2 examinees. In conjunction with test scores, a large-scale L1 experiment was conducted using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to determine the level of minimum context required to answer each item. Using Rasch analysis, item function was compared across both groups, with results indicating that cloze items can draw on information at both the sentence and passage level. This seems to suggest further that cloze tests generally tend to measure reading in both L1 and L2 examinees. These findings have important implications for the continued use of cloze tests, particularly in classroom and high-stakes contexts where they are commonly found.

中文翻译：

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缩小差距：完形填空项目的测量范围是多少？

最初设计用于测量 L1 读者的阅读和段落理解，完形填空测试继续用于 L2 评估目的。然而，对于完形填空题是否可以衡量超出本地理解信息的范围，以及它们是否纯粹是对阅读的测试，或者是否可以将表现推广到更广泛的关于熟练程度的声明，仍然存在争议。当前的研究着手解决这两个问题，方法是利用从 675 名 L1 和 2246 名 L2 考生的 15 次完形填空段落中提取的大量完形填空题 (k = 449)。结合测试分数，使用亚马逊的 Mechanical Turk 进行了大规模的 L1 实验，以确定回答每个项目所需的最低上下文级别。使用 Rasch 分析，比较两组的项目功能，结果表明完形填空题可以利用句子和段落级别的信息。这似乎进一步表明完形填空测试通常倾向于测量 L1 和 L2 考生的阅读。这些发现对继续使用完形填空测试具有重要意义，特别是在课堂和高风险环境中，它们经常被发现。