The passage looks to be a part of literary piece and it is written in past tense

Chapter 11 Testing Overall Proficiency
In the previous chapters, we considered how language skills such as writing, speaking and underlying skills such as grammar could be tested. However, there are situations where we need not focus on testing abilities separately: we may want to know to what degree a group of candidates can perform ‘language’. Thus we measure overall proficiency of candidates: we test many bits of language abilities could be effectively used at the same time. This chapter discusses one of the main techniques of testing overall proficiency of second language learners: cloze test
The following is a cloze test, where the candidates are required to complete blanks in the text.
David Jacobs lives in Britain with his wife and children. But he is not English. He was born in Kingston and came to Britain on 17^th August 2001 – mainly because it was impossible to get a job in Jamaica. He ………….. in Liverpool with his wife and two children ………….. he first arrived, then moved to Wolverhampton before finally moving …………… London where he has been living …………….. 2005. He spoke English fairly well on arrival, so ………….. did not bother to attend any special English courses. His ……………….. is good now and since three of his children were born in Britain, English is the only language spoken at home.

He likes England, but thinks there are three main problems facing ………………….. To begin with, it is difficult to …………………a good job. Secondly, there is the problem of finding decent accommodation and finally, there …………. still a lot of colour prejudice in Britain. In fact, his children are still considered to be foreigners, even though three of them are born in England.

The text comprises a number of gaps, which the candidates should complete after reading the text. For this purpose, candidates’ knowledge of vocabulary is involved, but vocabulary knowledge alone would not be sufficient. Their knowledge of word class, word order, tense, voice – grammar in one word – will also be useful. It will also be necessary to relate one part of the text to another and their knowledge of text organization, pronoun reference – Discourse knowledge – will be useful. This means that this technique require the candidates to demonstrate their overall proficiency – a number of skills at the same time – of second language.

1 Language functions such as agreeing, requesting, apologizing, negotiating etc.

2 It is possible to calculate the validity co-efficient. T two sets of numerical data are fed into, the co-efficient value is indicated in the Excel.

3 Because of better performances of few students the mean value can go up to 61.

4 SD is calculated by deducting the mean from each individual score, squiring the resulting figure to get rid of the minus signs, adding these together and dividing by the number of scores minus one: this gives us the variance. The squire root of this figure is SD.

5 Conduct the same test twice or the same test paper is marked by two examiners.

6 Extracting information, main idea, vocabulary, grammar, knowledge of pronouns, ability to relate one part of the text to another etc.

7 Its relationship cannot be realized in the way these two sub-skills are tested.

8 The same picture is given to two students. There are some slight differences between the two pictures. The two pictures are not shown to each other. They talk with one another and find the differences. In this task, one party has the information which is not given to the other. There is a ‘gap’ of information. When such gaps exist real communicative need arises.