The errors on cloze tests completed by 22 German adults who spoke English and 40 American college students were analyzed to determine whether predictable error patterns occurred. The results indicated predictable error patterns at the independent, instructional, and frustration reading levels for all the adults. The error profiles of the two groups were similar, but the German adults made significantly fewer grammar errors than other types of errors at the independent and frustration levels. It appears that when the German subjects understood the passages they could put in words that made sense as often as the Americans did; but they left cloze items blank when they did not understand the material. When the error profiles of the adults in this study were compared to those profiles of children in a previous study, it appeared that some factor operating in the adults--perhaps their knowledge of language--allowed them to make a greater number of logical substitutions than the children did. (RL)