Letter-Hint Cloze

This task carries 10 marks: when it is on your paper, that is half of everything Language in Use is worth, and twice as much as any other task in the section. Twenty gaps, and each one wants a single word of which only the opening is printed.

The text and the gap that is already filled in

This is a teaching text, not an exam text. In the exam this task has twenty gaps in one text, twice as many as below, and they come close together. The text below has ten. It does not train the part that hurts, which is keeping your place when there are more holed words than whole lines; for that, go to the trainer.

The lost-property shelf

Karl has looked after the same school building for nineteen years. Two years ago he noti_ _ _ (0) that nobody ever came back for the things left in the corridor. He col_ _ _ _ _ _ (1) forty gloves, a violin bow and a plastic crown, and put them all on a shelf outside the staff room. The head teacher was doub_ _ _ _ (2) about the idea at first. Karl had never plan_ _ _ (3) anything of the kind, and he wrote a card for every object himself. His office clos_ _ (4) at four every afternoon, so he does the writing in the morning. In March one of the teachers reali_ _ _ (5) that her own umbrella had been standing there since the winter. By December the shelf was beg_ _ _ _ _ _ (6) to look like a small museum, and by the spring the head teacher was recom_ _ _ _ _ _ _ (7) it to every visitor. Two pupils carr_ _ _ (8) the whole shelf into the entrance hall last June, and a pair of skis appe_ _ _ _ (9) on it a week later.

The gap numbered 0 is solved for you on paper and in the trainer alike: it carries no marks and is there only to show what is wanted. Here it is.

Three dashes, three letters. On paper, what you copy into the grid below the text is not ced but the whole word, printed opening included.

Nine gaps from the same text follow. I am going to explain nothing in advance: after each gap I will say what settled it, and the next gap will already know that.

The first gap

The word was obvious, the form was not, and the number of boxes chose it. Below are the rules that choose everything else.

The rule and the table

A gap in this task looks like a hole in a word, but it rests on four things at once: the visible opening, the number of dashes, the sentence around it, and spelling. Below are five rules. Each is stated about a class of gaps rather than a single gap.

A dash is a letter, and the count is exact. The missing letters are always the tail of the word: the opening is printed and never changes, and you only ever write to the right. Count the dashes first: usually the count rules out not the word but its form. collect, collects, collected and collecting differ in the length of the tail and in nothing else.

The opening and the length are often not enough. More than one everyday word can fit the same opening and the same length: pla plus three letters gives places, played, planet and plants. The meaning of the sentence picks the word, not the letters. And you have to read past the gap: the word to the right of it often decides more than everything to the left.

The ending is assigned by the grammar of the sentence. When the answer is a verb or a noun, its ending lies inside the gap, and the subject and the tense choose it. The subject is whoever the sentence is about: the bus in the singular pulls an -s in the present, the drivers in the plural pulls nothing. A past tense usually gives -ed, but an irregular verb changes inside the word instead (begin → began, bring → brought), and the dash count shows which shape the text wants. A was on the left settles nothing by itself: was plus -ing when the subject is doing something (was beginning), was plus the third form when something is done to it (was planned), and was plus an adjective when the word describes the subject (was doubtful). And many answers carry no ending at all: already, while, through, even.

Spelling changes inside the gap. Three changes eat a box or free one, and a fourth changes only letters:

• One vowel plus one consonant at the end of a stressed syllable doubles the consonant before -ed and -ing: plan → planned, stop → stopping, prefer → preferred. With the stress elsewhere it stays single (open → opened, visit → visited), two vowels in front of the consonant never double it (appear → appeared), and w, x and y never double at all (snowed, fixed, played). British spelling doubles a final l even without the stress (travel → travelling), American spelling keeps one (traveling); the dash count tells you which the text wants.
• A silent -e at the end of the stem drops before -ing, and -ed adds only a -d: close → closing, closed; notice → noticed.
• A consonant plus -y turns the y into i before -ed and -es: study → studied, carry → carries. Before -ing the y stays: studying.
• Verbs such as realise, organise and recognise can be written with -ise or -ize, the same length either way, and both spellings are accepted. A few verbs take -ise only: advertise, surprise, exercise, advise.

The whole word goes into the grid. The rubric says so outright: "write down the full word in the grid below". On paper what goes in the box is the whole word, printed opening included, and a word solved correctly but written down by half is worth exactly what an empty box is worth. In the trainer's own tasks you type straight into the gap, and there the missing letters and the whole word both count; the drills in this article, like the paper, ask for the whole word.

The same five rules, boiled down to what the eye can see in a gap:

Gaps 2–5

Four gaps from the same text follow one after another, and a different part of the word breaks each time.

Here the letters left two candidates and the meaning separated them. In the next gap there is nothing to choose: word and form are clear at once, and there is still somewhere to go wrong.

The extra box turned out to be a doubled letter. In the next gap there are exactly as many boxes as needed, and only one place left to go wrong.

The present tense handed over the ending. The next gap picks its ending out of two as well, except the clue this time sits at the end of the sentence rather than next to the gap.

Gaps 6–9

Four gaps down, and in two of them the grammar of the sentence had the last word. Now it steps back: the next gap closes before you even get to the tense.

Three forms of one verb were cut out by length. In the next gap length is beside the point: every candidate in it is the same size.

The last two misses sat inside the word itself rather than in the sentence around it. Two gaps are left, and with them the part of the job that the paper does not do in the text but in the grid.

One last pass, a new text

Ten gaps of one text are behind you. Now the way the paper does it: a new text, no commentary between the gaps, and the same order of work — boxes, sentence, spelling, grid. This one is about a bus depot that keeps everything left behind on board.

The depot shed

The bus depot in Hallein keeps everything left on the seats. Drivers bri_ _ (1) the objects to a wooden shed behind the workshop, and the umbrellas in it are cou_ _ _ _ (2) every Friday. The depot has never adver_ _ _ _ _ (3) the shed, but half the town knows about it. Right now a violin case is standing there, and nobody knows who it belo_ _ _ (4) to. Two passengers have alre_ _ _ (5) come back twice this month.

The sentence chose both words, and you completed both right there in the line. On the paper that is not enough: until the words are copied into the grid in full, they do not count.

What to take away

The order of moves that closed every gap today: count the boxes, read the sentence to the end and past the gap, check the ending against the subject and the tense, remember the doubled consonant, the dropped e and the y, and only then write the whole word into the grid.

One more thing about empty boxes. Nothing on the exam paper takes marks off for a wrong word in Language in Use, while an empty box is guaranteed to earn nothing. If the opening and the box count have left you two candidates, a candidate written down is half a chance.

Two articles the gaps pointed to today, and two tasks built along similar lines:

Word choice: how the sentence cuts out a lookalike candidate Verb forms: irregular pasts and the spelling of -ed and -ing Word formation: the other task where you write the word out yourself Open cloze: the same thing, without a single letter given