Open Cloze
Open cloze is worth 5 marks of the twenty in Language in Use, and it is the one task in the written paper that puts nothing at all beside the gap: no options to pick from, no word bank, no first letters, no word in brackets. An empty line and the text around it.
The text and the gap that is already filled in
This is a teaching text, not an exam text. In the exam the text is considerably longer, with ten gaps in it. The text below is much shorter. It does not train the part that actually costs you marks, which is holding on to what the text is about while you work your way down to the ninth gap; for that, go to the trainer.
A shelf of borrowed drills
The idea came (0) ___ a neighbour who counted eleven drills in one small building. They built the shelf in (1) ___ to stop buying the same tool twice. The whole thing depends (2) ___ people bringing the tools back on time. Nobody knows (3) ___ many drills the shelf has lost, because nobody writes anything down. Two ladders (4) ___ been broken since the opening, and both were repaired the same week. Each repair (5) ___ place in the back room on Friday evenings. The shelf lends drills, ladders and, (6) ___ course, the odd hammer. Nobody waits (7) ___ permission: anyone in the building may take a tool. Borrowing a drill for one evening costs less (8) ___ buying one that will be used twice. At the moment one of the drills is (9) ___ repaired, so the shelf looks emptier than usual.
The gap numbered 0 comes already filled in, on the exam paper and in the trainer alike: it shows you what is wanted, and it carries no marks. Here it is.
| Gap | What is printed around it | What goes in |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | The idea came (0) ___ a neighbour who… | from |
One word, and nothing else. Not came from, not from a, and not two words to be on the safe side.
Capital letters do not matter: the official key lists These/these as one answer, and a gap at the
start of a sentence is marked the same whichever you write.
After that come nine gaps from the same text, one at a time. I am going to explain nothing in advance: after each gap I will say what chose it, and the next gap will already know that.
The only thing you could get wrong here was the number of words, not the choice. Below are the rules that pick the word itself.
The rule and the table
A gap in this task looks like a hole in the meaning, but it often rests on the grammar of the words next to it, or on a fixed phrase the gap is one word of. Here are five things that settle a large share of the gaps. Each one is stated about a class of gaps rather than a single gap: it settles any gap of its class, wherever that gap turns up.
One word per gap. Exactly one word goes in the box, even when the phrase around it is longer:
in ___ to, ___ course, ___ place. Do not reach for a contraction: don't or hasn't is two words written together, do and not, and when a gap seems to want one, look again for the single word that is actually missing.
Preposition. One of the commonest kinds of gap. The preposition is assigned by the word to the
left of the gap, not by the meaning of the sentence: depend on, wait for, apply for,
belong to. The verbs that take a preposition in English are not the same verbs that take one in
your language, and nearly every miss here comes from that.
Linking word. A conjunction, a relative or a question word joining two parts of a sentence. It,
too, is required by the shape of its neighbours. After a comparative (less, more, cheaper)
comes than. Before many, much and long in an embedded question comes how.
Helper verb. A helper verb is be, have, do or a modal such as can and must; it carries
no meaning of its own, it marks tense, number and voice. You spot it by the neighbour on the right:
only a form of have (has, have, had) can stand right before been, and a form of be
stands before a past participle (the third form of a verb: broken, repaired, sold).
The form of the word you write. Meaning picks the word, but the subject and the tense pick the
ending, -s, -ing or -ed. A base form in a gap that wants a participle is a wrong answer, not a
small slip.
The same five rules, boiled down to what the eye can see around the gap:
| What stands next to the gap | What goes in |
|---|---|
| verb on the left, noun on the right | a preposition: on, for, to |
less, more or a word ending in -er on the left | than |
many, much or long on the right | how |
been on the right | has, have, had |
is or are on the left, past participle on the right, an action going on now | being |
half of a set phrase: ___ course, ___ place | the other word of the phrase |
| singular subject, present tense | a verb with -s |
The set phrases worth knowing whole, because the gap is so often one word of them: in order to,
of course, take place, according to, to some extent, rather than, as well as,
no doubt, on the other hand, instead of.
And one thing about the key itself that the paper does not show you. In the official sample key
roughly half the gaps accept more than one word: arrive or come, like, need, want or
wish. There is no need to hunt for the single word the writer had in mind: anything that fits the
sentence both grammatically and in meaning will do.
Gaps 2–5
A verb stood to the left of the gap, and it settled everything. The next gap is settled not by what is on the left but by what is on the right.
Here the gap opened a whole chunk of the sentence. In the next one it hides inside a verb form instead, torn in half.
You found the word from its neighbour. In the next gap the neighbour hands you the word itself, but you have to submit it in a different shape from the one that comes to mind.
Gaps 6–9
Four gaps down, and in every one the nearest neighbour handed over the word. From here the neighbours say less and the fixed phrases around the gap say more.
You completed half a phrase. The next gap is about a pair of words again, except this pair builds itself around a verb instead of being learnt whole.
The verb on the left assigned the preposition. In the next gap the word on the left settles everything too, but it is not a verb and it takes no object.
The comparison demanded one particular word. In the last gap of this text the word is single too, and the choice is between three forms of one verb.
One last pass, a new text
Now the way the paper does it: a new text, four gaps in a row, no commentary in between. It is about an outdoor municipal pool that stopped closing for the winter.
Four gaps, and not one of them asked you to invent a word out of thin air. That leaves the last question, the one the paper never shows: how many different words the key is willing to accept.
Every member ___ to bring the tool back within a week. Which word will the key reject?
Above exam levelWhat to take away
| Marks for the task | 5 |
| Gaps in the exam | 10 scored, plus the unscored example 0 |
| What you write | one word in the form the sentence needs, no contractions |
| Help on the page | none: no options, no letters, no word in brackets |
| Kinds of answer | a word from a set phrase, a preposition, a linking word, a helper verb |
| How many answers fit | often several; the official key lists alternatives on about half the gaps |
Many answers are ordinary content words, and the text around the gap, or the set phrase they belong to, hands them to you. The expensive ones are grammatical: preposition, linking word, helper verb. Those are chosen by the nearest neighbour rather than by the meaning of the sentence, and they take a second to check: look left, then right, and only then think about meaning.
One last thing, about blank boxes. Nothing on the exam paper takes marks off for a wrong word in Language in Use, while an empty gap is guaranteed to earn nothing. If the neighbour on the left calls for a preposition and you are not sure which one, a word you write down at least has a chance of being one the key accepts.
Three articles the gaps pointed to today:
Prepositions: which word chooses the preposition, and where English needs one at all Connectors: than, how and the other linking words Passive: have been broken and is being repairedWas this article helpful?