Employment of thecnical cloze as instrument for better performance in reading

Abstract

This paper is intended to show that de cloze technique can be an effective instrument to improve the reading performance of students in elementary school. The study was conducted with an experimental group (group A), 12 students from 5th grade of elementary school, in a public school. The experimental group participated in reading activities though twelve cloze tests. The results were compared with the performance of a control group (group B), also composed of 12 participants, school and the same grade. The experimental group responded to 3 cloze tests weekly during one month, totaling 12 cloze tests, while the control group participated only in the last test cloze. The texts used for implement cloze tests were folktales drawn from a collection, “Histórias da Carochinha”, in three volumes, published by Atica. The theoretical support for the reasoning of this study was the model for testing hypotheses of Goodman (1967), which defines the activity of reading as an interaction between thought and language, activity in which the reader reconstructs the meaning of a text using the basic strategies while reading. The results showed that the cloze technique can be effective in improving performance in reading, enabling students to overcome reading difficulties, developing their cognitive and metacogntive strategies for understanding the reading process.