An Alternative Method for Teaching and Testing Reading Comprehension

Abstract

The summary doze technique, which can be used for both teaching and testing reading and listening comprehension, offers an alternative format to multiple choice. Summary doze exercises are prepared by summarizing the content of the original text into a new text about one third the length. The shortened text is then transformed into a rational doze exercise. The learner, who always has access to the original text, must complete the summary text using the list of choices provided. Research using the technique has shown that it is certainly as good a measure of reading comprehension as the multiple-choice-based format and that it is often more reliable. Considerable experimentation, however, remains to be done concerning the text topic and choice and frequency of deletions.