2021 Volume 180 Pages 80-88
The Cloze Test（Taylar, 1953）, a fill-in-the-blanks test, has been developed and validated as a suitable test for measuring L2 reading, listening comprehension, and overall language proficiency. In this study, we describe a new web tool that utilizes a vocabulary database to create blanks in a text to fill in, selecting words and characters with certain lexical properties. The test is created by copying text into a window, specifying the conditions, and clicking the “create” button, after which it can be downloaded and processed. Word, character, clause, or sentence can be designated as the segmenting unit. Frequency level, part of speech, word origin, lexical genre, and blank interval can be specified when selecting “word” as the unit. When “character” is used as the unit, the character type, frequency level, and blank interval can be designated. Regardless of whether the word, character, clause, or sentence is designated as a unit, users may also specify whether or not to use furigana （small hiragana showing the pronunciation of kanji）, and whether or not to leave the blanked-out units as answer choices. This web tool is expected to have multiple applications, including testing of vocabulary and grammar, autonomous learning, classroom education, vocabulary list creation, and research on inferring the meaning of unknown words. The URL for the tool is: http://160.16.101.253/test/fibt/.
