DRP Cloze Procedure and DRP Format — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What assessment method does the DRP use to measure reading comprehension?
- Essay responses to passage content
- Modified cloze procedure with multiple-choice answers (Correct answer)
- Oral reading with a running record
- True/false statements about each passage
Correct answer: Modified cloze procedure with multiple-choice answers
The DRP uses a modified cloze procedure in which students select the best word from provided choices to fill in blanks within prose passages.
Question 2: In the DRP format, students encounter blanks within a passage and must:
- Write any word that comes to mind
- Select the best-fitting word from a set of provided answer choices (Correct answer)
- Read aloud and self-correct errors
- Identify the main idea before attempting blanks
Correct answer: Select the best-fitting word from a set of provided answer choices
Students choose from multiple provided options for each blank, making this a multiple-choice cloze format rather than a free-recall task.
Question 3: How many answer choices are typically provided for each blank in a DRP cloze passage?
Correct answer: 5
The DRP typically provides five answer choices per blank, one of which is the correct contextually meaningful word.
Question 4: Successful completion of DRP cloze items primarily demonstrates that a reader:
- Can decode individual words at a rapid pace
- Uses contextual information to construct meaning from text (Correct answer)
- Has memorized a large number of definitions
- Applies phonics rules accurately
Correct answer: Uses contextual information to construct meaning from text
Choosing the correct word for each blank requires integrating surrounding context to construct meaning, which is the core comprehension skill the DRP measures.
Question 5: Which cognitive process does the DRP cloze format most directly target?
- Phonological processing and decoding
- Literal recall of isolated facts
- Constructive comprehension using contextual clues (Correct answer)
- Spelling and orthographic memory
Correct answer: Constructive comprehension using contextual clues
The cloze format requires readers to construct meaning by drawing on surrounding text context, measuring constructive comprehension rather than rote recall.
Question 6: In the DRP, passages within a single test form are arranged in order of:
- Topic familiarity for the student
- Increasing text difficulty (Correct answer)
- Alphabetical subject matter
- Random difficulty to prevent guessing
Correct answer: Increasing text difficulty
DRP passages are ordered from easiest to most difficult so that students progress through increasingly challenging texts until comprehension breaks down.
Question 7: A student who correctly completes the cloze items in a DRP passage is demonstrating:
- The ability to read that passage with adequate understanding (Correct answer)
- Proficiency in creative writing
- Advanced knowledge of grammar rules only
- Strong phonemic awareness
Correct answer: The ability to read that passage with adequate understanding
Correctly completing the cloze items indicates the student can comprehend the passage at a functional level, which is the core purpose of the DRP.
Question 8: Which of the following best explains why the DRP cloze format measures functional reading rather than isolated skills?
- It focuses only on decoding single words in isolation
- It requires integrating information across the entire passage to select correct answers (Correct answer)
- It tests listening comprehension instead of reading
- It measures only literal recall of stated facts
Correct answer: It requires integrating information across the entire passage to select correct answers
Because correct answers depend on understanding whole-passage meaning, the DRP measures functional reading — the ability to use text as a connected, meaningful whole.
Question 9: A student who cannot complete cloze items in a DRP passage at a given difficulty level most likely:
- Lacks phonics skills needed for that passage
- Has insufficient contextual comprehension at that text difficulty (Correct answer)
- Is unable to identify the passage's topic
- Has poor handwriting affecting response accuracy
Correct answer: Has insufficient contextual comprehension at that text difficulty
Failure to complete cloze items indicates the text difficulty exceeds the student's ability to use context for meaning construction — the skill the DRP directly assesses.
Question 10: In the DRP cloze format, answer choices are constructed so that:
- Only one choice is grammatically correct
- All choices are grammatically plausible but only one preserves the passage's full meaning (Correct answer)
- Choices are randomly drawn from grade-level word lists
- The correct answer is always the most common English word
Correct answer: All choices are grammatically plausible but only one preserves the passage's full meaning
All distractors fit grammatically so that students must engage with the passage's full semantic content to identify the single meaning-preserving choice.
Question 11: What makes the DRP cloze format fundamentally different from a vocabulary definition test?
- The DRP uses longer passages
- The DRP requires understanding word meaning within full text context, not in isolation (Correct answer)
- The DRP focuses only on academic vocabulary
- The DRP is administered orally to younger students
Correct answer: The DRP requires understanding word meaning within full text context, not in isolation
While vocabulary tests assess word meanings in isolation, the DRP requires students to understand how words function within a connected text, measuring comprehension not definitional knowledge.
Question 12: How does the DRP cloze procedure simulate natural reading comprehension?
- By requiring students to read aloud at a measured pace
- By requiring active integration of text information to fill in missing elements (Correct answer)
- By presenting passages on familiar topics only
- By testing students immediately after oral instruction
Correct answer: By requiring active integration of text information to fill in missing elements
Natural reading requires continuous integration of text clues to construct meaning; the cloze blanks externalize this process by making it visible through word selection.
Question 13: When a student approaches a DRP passage at their instructional reading level, their performance on cloze items typically shows:
- Perfect accuracy with no errors
- Adequate accuracy achieved with effort and use of context clues (Correct answer)
- Random guessing across all items
- Consistent failure on every blank
Correct answer: Adequate accuracy achieved with effort and use of context clues
At the instructional level, students can complete most items correctly when they actively use contextual information, though the task requires effort rather than effortless reading.
Question 14: The consistency of the deletion rate across all DRP passages of varying difficulty is important because it ensures that:
- Harder passages have fewer blanks to compensate for difficulty
- The format variable remains constant so only text difficulty varies between passages (Correct answer)
- Students at all levels complete the same number of items
- Passage length is the primary determinant of score
Correct answer: The format variable remains constant so only text difficulty varies between passages
A consistent deletion rate keeps the cloze format uniform across all passages, so differences in student performance reflect text difficulty differences rather than format variation.
