The Effect of the Modified Cloze Procedure on the Writing Proficiency of Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners

The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of modified cloze procedure on writing proficiency of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. To fulfill the purpose of the study, 110 participants studying at Semnan University majoring in English literature were tested on CELT proficiency test. 65 participants who were found to be homogenous were selected and assigned randomly to two groups of 32 and 33, one as experimental group and the other as a control group. Then, both groups were tested on a composition as a pre-test in the first session. During 15 minutes of each session the students in both groups were provided with explicit explanations about methods of paragraph development. After instructors teaching, the experimental group was provided with a cloze passage as a prewriting activity. Then they were asked to write their own paragraph similar to the cloze passage in terms of topic and method of development. On the other hand, the participants of the control group had no treatment. They were given a topic each session about which they wrote a composition. The given topics were similar to those of the experimental group. At the end of the term, the two groups were post-tested given the same topic of the pretest to write a composition (post-test). The papers of both groups in pre-test and post-test were assessed by the researcher and two other raters. In order to estimate the degree of relationship between the scores given by the raters to the first and last compositions of both groups, a correlation coefficient test (the Pearson product moment correlation) was adapted. Then the means of both groups were compared through the application of a t- test. The result indicated that there is a statistically significant difference between the performances of both groups. It was concluded that the participants who received cloze passages on writing, outperformed those who did not in writing.