What Makes a Cloze Item Difficult?

This pilot study explores the link between linguistic characteristics of doze test items and individual item difficulty estimates. Five reading passages were randomJy selected from a public library, developed into 30-item doze tests and randomJy administered to 179 Japanese EFL students. Each of the 150 resulting items was analyzed for item facility and for various linguistic characteristics. Multiple-regression analysis indicates that linguistic characteristics, in various combinations, can account for large proportions of the variation in doze item facility. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for language testing research and plans for future research on a larger scale