A cloze test involves taking a document (or a document sample) of about 250 words and deleting every fifth word (these seem to be the canonical numbers,) leaving a blank in its place. The reader is then asked to fill in the missing words.

In technical writing we use this as a test of readability. The idea is that there should be sufficient (local) redundancy in a document to allow a reader to score in the 50-60% range. Used in this way it measures the writer not the reader.

This program asks the user to specify the deletion interval (in case you don't like every fifth word), the name of the text file to be clozed, and the name of the file in which the test is to be stored.

The program replaces words with numbered underlined spaces and generates an answer key at the end of the document.

Think Pascal (Mac) Code for Cloze Test

The program is so small that there is no point to the following file unless you are behind a firewall that prevents the download of .exe files.
Close Making Application for DOS (zipped) (6 k)

• Turbo Pascal (DOS) Code for Cloze Test

Important notes for the PC version.

• The program runs in DOS but will launch like any ordinary program if double clicked in Windows. It just isn't very pretty when it runs.
• When it starts, the program asks you for three things:
  • The cloze interval(how far apart the removed words are.) Just type a number and press return.
  • The name of the input file. Type the name (see below) and press return.
  • A name for the output file. Same thing.
• Your input file must be a text file and must have the extension .txt. To make a text file, open your file in your word processor and use the "save as" command to save it as text only. When you name the file be sure to end the name with .txt
• The name of your input file must be 8 characters or fewer!!
• The worst part of the program is that you have to specify the input and output files by their paths. So if, for example, your input file is named goodstuf.txt and is in a folder called "preparation" on your C drive, you specify the file as C:\preparation\goodstuf.txt
• Actually there is away around this -- if you put the program in the same folder as the input file, and are willing to have the output appear there too then you need only type the file name. In the example above put cloze.exe in the "preparation" folder and then you can specify the file as
  goodstuf.txt
• In naming the output file follow the same pattern.
• The output file is of type text. If you open it by double clicking it may be opened by Notepad or some other program. BUT you can always open the file with your word processor by first opening the word processor program and then using the "open" command in the "File" menu.
• If you have to download the stuffed file (it has extension .zip) you need a program like WinZip (available free in the web) to uncompact it.

I hope this helps -- if not, email me until I get it right!

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