The Relationship between EFL Students' Cultural Schemata and Their Performance on Cloze Tests with a Focus on Gender

This mixed method study was designed to discover the relationship between male and female Iranian EFL students' cultural schemata and their performance on three types of cloze tests. It also investigated the relationship between gender and Iranian EFL students' degrees of cultural familiarity with culture-specific cloze texts. In addition, the male and female students' understanding of eight culture-specific words provided in culture-specific cloze texts is explored. The subjects of the study were 42 EFL university students (19 males and 23 females). Three different cloze tests with identical content with terms related to marriage, but different types of schemata, were developed. These included a cloze test with culturally neutral schemata of marriage terms, a cloze test with cultural schemata of marriage in Islam, and also a cloze test with cultural schemata of marriage in English. All three types of cloze tests were administered to the subjects in two sessions. Degrees of cultural familiarity were measured through a cultural familiarity questionnaire. A semi-structured interview was also used to explore both the males' and females' understanding of the eight culture-specific words provided in the culturally specific cloze tests. To analyze the data, an independent sample t-test and a paired sample t-test were used. The results of the study showed that females performed better than males on all three types of cloze tests. Furthermore, both males and females performed better on the second cloze test, the third, and the first cloze test respectively. The results also indicated that gender did not significantly affect the degrees of cultural familiarity.