日本の高校英語教育にオーラルコミュニケーションA, B, Cの各コースが導入されて3年になる。今まで英語学習の4技能の中で最も難しいとされているスピーキングのテストの作成,実施,評価の方法が当然問題となる。本論では, Conversational Cloze Test(会話型クローズテスト)とConversational Ability(会話力)が相関関係を持つ,といういくつかの研究報告に注目し,Conversational Cloze TestをSpeaking Abilityを評価するテストとして採用することの有効性を考察した。In 1994, the Ministry of Education in Japan has introduced conversation classes in the High School English curriculum as a requirement. Thus, recently, much attention has been given to how communicative ability of nonnative speakers can be tested. Among the various methods of measuring oral proficiency there are functional dialogue tests that consists of guidelines for a dialogue and conducted through role-playing, functional written tests that consists of multiple-choice questions on common situations, other forms of oral and written tests that involves work-related situations, interview tests that reguires dialogue between the interviewer and interviewee, and cloze tests that involves students to fill the gaps of a continued discourse. This paper will focus mainly on cloze tests as a means to determine oral proficiency and integrative skills, conducted in a simplified and practical manner. To give a brief background, the definition and history of cloze test will be introduced, followed by discussion of the advantages of the cloze test over existing methods. The goal of our study is to determine if cloze procedure can be used as a measure for communicative skills. Thus, two questions will be pursued : (a) How do the cloze and Michigan test relate to each other in measuring integrative skills ? (b) How do the cloze and oral recording relate to each other in measuring oral proficiency skills
