DRP Cloze Procedure and DRP Format 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: The DRP cloze format is described as 'modified' compared to traditional cloze tests because:
- Passages are significantly shorter
- Students select from provided word choices rather than supplying their own words (Correct answer)
- Only function words are deleted
- The test is administered orally
Correct answer: Students select from provided word choices rather than supplying their own words
Traditional cloze tests require students to write in missing words from memory; the DRP modifies this by offering multiple-choice options, removing the spelling and recall burden.
Question 2: Why does the DRP provide answer choices for cloze blanks rather than requiring students to write missing words?
- To reduce the influence of spelling ability on reading comprehension scores (Correct answer)
- To make the test less challenging overall
- To focus assessment on phonics knowledge
- To shorten administration time exclusively
Correct answer: To reduce the influence of spelling ability on reading comprehension scores
Providing choices eliminates the confound of spelling skill, ensuring the score reflects reading comprehension rather than a student's ability to recall and spell words.
Question 3: In the DRP, distractor answer choices for each blank are typically designed to be:
- Completely unrelated to the passage topic
- Grammatically plausible but semantically incorrect in context (Correct answer)
- Antonyms of the correct word
- Randomly selected from a grade-level word list
Correct answer: Grammatically plausible but semantically incorrect in context
Distractors fit grammatically but do not preserve the passage's meaning, requiring students to use full contextual comprehension to identify the correct choice.
Question 4: Which aspect of reading ability does the DRP cloze format most directly assess?
- Reading fluency and words-per-minute rate
- Phonics and decoding accuracy
- Constructing meaning from contextual text information (Correct answer)
- Isolated vocabulary definition knowledge
Correct answer: Constructing meaning from contextual text information
The DRP measures whether students can use the surrounding text to derive meaning — a construct known as constructive or functional reading comprehension.
Question 5: When a student encounters a blank in a DRP passage, the surrounding text primarily serves to:
- Distract with irrelevant background information
- Provide context clues that help identify the correct word (Correct answer)
- Test the student's background knowledge of the topic
- Assess awareness of sentence structure alone
Correct answer: Provide context clues that help identify the correct word
The surrounding sentences and paragraph supply context that a proficient reader uses to determine which word best fits the blank.
Question 6: The DRP cloze procedure most closely aligns with which reading model or theory?
- Strictly bottom-up models emphasizing letter-by-letter decoding
- Interactive or constructivist models of reading comprehension (Correct answer)
- Whole-language theory focusing exclusively on meaning negotiation
- Phonological awareness models
Correct answer: Interactive or constructivist models of reading comprehension
The DRP reflects interactive/constructivist models by requiring readers to integrate lower-level decoding with higher-level contextual inference to select correct words.
Question 7: What does it mean when a student's performance drops sharply on DRP passages of a particular difficulty level?
- The student has reached their independent reading ceiling for that text level (Correct answer)
- The student needs more phonics instruction
- The passages at that level are poorly written
- The student is not motivated by that topic
Correct answer: The student has reached their independent reading ceiling for that text level
A sharp performance drop indicates the student can no longer use context effectively at that difficulty, marking the upper boundary of functional reading comprehension.
DRP Cloze Procedure and DRP Format 2
The DRP cloze format is described as 'modified' compared to traditional cloze tests because: