Part 2 – Open Cloze

Part 2 of the B2 First Reading and Use of English Paper is called ‘Open Cloze‘.

Open Cloze consists of a short text with 8 gaps – 9 gaps including the example at the beginning. Each gap equals one word and the candidate has to complete each gap by identifying the missing word.

You don’t have options to choose from, so you have to guess the word or words accepted for each gap.

If we look at the example we can see a gap marked (0) and above the text, we can see the correct answer for (0) is marked ‘AS’ – that’s ‘as’, as in ‘I worked as a motorbike stunt rider’.

Your answers will be written on a separate sheet of paper.

The main focus in the Open Cloze is grammar and certain parts of speech are often tested.

[Image source: Cambridge Handbook]

Exam Tips

Make sure you read the complete text first before attempting to answer any questions. Having an overview of the content will sometimes help you to identify missing words.

Pay attention to the clauses and words around each gap as these will usually help you identify which part of speech is missing – a verb, conjunction, a pronoun for example.

How to improve
Record phrases, not just individual words, in your vocabulary notebook. Contextualize them by creating sentences (questions, answers) and using them as much as possible in any written activity you do.

What to study:

Pronouns
Pronouns will often be gapped. In particular, look out for reflexive pronouns such as ‘ourselves‘, ‘yourself‘ etc. and relative pronouns – ‘who‘, ‘where‘, ‘when‘ etc.

Related content: Relative Clauses 1 | Relative Clauses 2

Articles and quantifiers
Articles and quantifiers like ‘much‘, ‘more‘, ‘some‘, ‘many‘ etc. will sometimes be required.

Modal & Auxiliary Verbs
Modal verbs, like ‘will‘, ‘would‘, ‘must‘, ‘can‘ etc and the auxiliary verbs ‘be‘, ‘do‘, and ‘have‘ are often tested.