Read past the gap: cloze passages

What is a cloze passage?

A passage with words taken out, and your child puts them back — sometimes choosing from a list, sometimes supplying the word themselves.

It looks like a vocabulary test and is really a reading test. The question is whether your child can hold the sense of a whole sentence while attending to one gap in the middle of it.

Read past the gap

This is the rule that matters most, and it is the opposite of what comes naturally.

The path was so ___ that we walked in single file.

Stop at the gap and narrow, wide and long are all defensible. The path was so wide. The path was so long. Nothing yet rules them out.

Read on to the full stop and only one survives: walking in single file follows from a narrow path and from nothing else.

The clue is after the gap at least as often as before it. Children stop at the gap because the gap is where the question is, and that single habit accounts for most of the marks lost on this type.

Grammar first, meaning second

Before thinking about what the passage means, ask what kind of word the gap needs. It is quicker and it works even on a sentence your child has not fully followed.

• A gap after a or the needs a noun
• A gap after had or was needs a particular verb form
• A gap between a determiner and a noun needs an adjective

She had ___ the letter. Whatever the passage is about, had needs a past participle — so read survives and reading and reads are gone before meaning has been considered at all.

When the words are supplied

If the gaps come with a word list, the question is a puzzle as well as a reading test, because every word is used exactly once.

That makes the gaps interact. Filling one removes an option from all the others.

So: work the easiest gaps first, cross each word off the list as it goes in, and leave the hardest until the list has shrunk. A child who works through the gaps in order is solving the hardest one with the whole list still available — which is the wrong way round.

Can you show me a worked example?

Where do pupils lose marks?

Stopping at the gap, which is the whole difficulty of the type.

Filling gaps in order when a word list is supplied, instead of easiest first.

Choosing a word that fits the topic rather than the sentence — a word about paths, in a sentence about a path, that does not follow from what comes after.

Try it yourself

Read each sentence to the full stop before choosing. Say what kind of word the gap needs first.

1. The path was so ___ that we walked in single file. (narrow / wide / long)
2. She had ___ the letter before anyone else arrived. (read / reading / reads)
3. ___ the rain had stopped, the ground was still soaked. (Because / Although / Until)
4. He spoke in a ___ voice, so nobody at the back could hear. (loud / quiet / cheerful)
5. Why is it a mistake to fill the easiest gap last when the words are supplied in a list?

Show Answers

How much practice does this type need at home?

Make them. Take a paragraph from whatever your child is reading, cover four words with sticky notes, and ask them to fill the gaps.

Making them is the better exercise, though. When your child chooses which words to remove, they have to think about which ones the sentence would still reveal — and that is exactly the reasoning the question asks for, done from the other side.