Cloze Test with Clues — Rules, Method & Exercise

A cloze test with clues is a continuous passage with blanks and a box of words to place in them. It differs from gap filling in that the passage is a single connected text, so meaning carries across sentences: a blank is often settled by a sentence other than its own. Read the whole passage before writing anything, then place the words you are sure of first.

Where it is set: SSC & HSC English 2nd Paper — Grammar

A cloze test is one text, not a row of sentences

The difference between a cloze test and a gap-filling exercise is not the presence of a word box — it is that a cloze passage is continuous. The sentences develop one subject, so a blank in the fourth sentence can be settled by something stated in the first, and a choice that fits its own sentence perfectly may still be wrong because it contradicts the paragraph.

That single fact dictates the method: read the whole passage before writing anything. Students who begin filling at the first blank routinely produce a passage whose second half disagrees with its first.

• ✓ Read the passage twice with every blank still empty, then begin.
• ✗ Filling blank 1 before knowing what the passage is about. ✓ Establishing the topic and the writer’s attitude first.

Find the topic and the direction of the argument

Every cloze passage has a subject and an attitude towards it — approving, critical, cautionary, explanatory. Naming both before you start eliminates whole groups of words from the box, because a passage warning about a danger will not take words of praise.

What the passage type tells you about the missing words

• ✓ A passage on the harm of smoking will take harmful, not helpful, however well the sentence reads.
• ✓ A passage describing how tea is made will take sequence words, not contrast words.

Follow the chain of reference

Because the text is continuous, words point backwards and forwards. Pronouns, demonstratives and repeated nouns form a chain, and a blank inside that chain must keep it unbroken.

• A pronoun in a later sentence must have something to refer back to — check what it names.
• This, that, these, such point at an idea already stated; the blank near them often repeats it.
• A definite article before a blank means the noun has been mentioned before — look back for it.
• Repetition is a signal, not a fault: passages often restate their key noun, so the box may hold it.
• If two blanks are close together, they usually take words of different classes, not two of the same.

• ✓ Trees give us oxygen. Without ___ we cannot live. → them, referring back to trees
• ✓ He made one serious ___. That error cost him the match. → mistake, restated as error

Let collocation break a tie

When two words in the box belong to the right class and fit the meaning, the tie is usually broken by collocation — which words English habitually puts together. This is knowledge built by reading rather than by rule, but the commonest pairs are learnable.

• ✓ Trees play an important ___ in our life. → role
• ✓ We should ___ attention to our health. → pay

A working order for the whole item

Given a passage, a box and about eight minutes, this order produces the best score reliably.

• Read the passage twice, ignoring the blanks, and say the topic to yourself in one sentence.
• Label the box by word class.
• Fill every blank you can justify in one word of reasoning; leave the rest.
• Return to the unfilled blanks with the reduced box, using meaning and collocation.
• Read the finished passage straight through as a text — this is the step that catches contradictions.
• Only then check spelling and the form of each word you wrote.

• ✓ Reading the finished passage once catches more errors than rechecking blanks individually.
• ✓ A word that is right in its sentence but wrong in its paragraph is the failure this item is built to expose.

Practice

Work through these before you check the answers — the reasoning matters more than the answer.

1. Box: role, part, place. — Trees play an important ___ in our environment.
2. Box: pay, give, make. — We must ___ attention to what the teacher says.
3. Box: them, it, him. — Trees give us shade. Without ___ life would be hard.
4. Box: harmful, helpful. — Smoking is ___ to health.
5. Box: heavy, strong. — There was ___ rain throughout the night.
6. Box: first, however, finally. — ___ , wash the rice. Then boil it.
7. Box: mistake, error, fault. — He made one serious ___ in the calculation.
8. Box: because, but, so. — He was very tired, ___ he finished the work.

Answers

1. role — “play a role” is the standard collocation.
2. pay — “pay attention”.
3. them — it refers back to the plural “trees”.
4. harmful — the passage warns, so words of praise are excluded.
5. heavy — English collocates “heavy” with rain.
6. First — the passage describes a process, so it takes sequence words.
7. mistake — “make a mistake” is the fixed pairing.
8. but — the second idea contrasts with the first.