A Correlational Study of Expectancy Grammar’s Manifestation on Cloze Test and Lexical Collocational Density

The notion of expectancy grammar as a key to understanding the nature of psychologically real processes that underlie language use is introduced by Oller (1979). A central issue in this notion is that expectancy generating systems are constructed and modified in the course of language acquisition. Thus, one of the characteristics of language proficiency is that it consists of such an expectancy generating system. Therefore, it is claimed that for a proposed measure to qualify as a language test, it must invoke the expectancy system or grammar of the examinee.This article aimed at finding the relationship between textuality of a text and its realization in expectancy grammar. To this end, texts with high and low lexical collocational density (LCD) as a means of reaching textuality in a text are given to participants in the form of cloze test. Texts with high and low lexical collocational density were selected to act as cloze tests and administered on EFL learners. An independant t-test was used to analyse the mean of the scores obtained in pairs of low and high LCD texts. The results showd that texts with high lexical collocational density enjoy higher degrees of readibility and are suitable for cloze tests. In other words, the group who took cloze tests with high lexical collocational density outpeformed the group whose cloze tests had been prepared on texts with low lexical collocational density.