FCE Use of English: Open Cloze - David Petrie

• To raise SS awareness of the type of language commonly tested in the Open Cloze
EiU paper.
Aims: • To give the SS practice of the Open Cloze task
• To introduce a degree of enthusiasm for exam tasks…!
Copies of an example FCE open cloze
Materials: task
Copies of Handout #01 (as below)

Timings: About 50 – 60 minutes, but could be extended to 75.

Procedure:
Put students into two teams. Each team gets points throughout the whole class, leading to a (hopefully) really
competitive energy in the classroom

Backs to the board with the following items: (each team gets one point for each correct item)
in / the / had / why / such / at / for / an / from / since / are

Categorisation task: Each team has to come up with grammatical categories that the words above can fit into:
e.g. the & an = articles. Each team gets a point for each correct category
Possible categories: Articles / auxiliary verbs / prepositions / determiners / relative pronouns / linkers /
See Handout #01 – below – for more details.
(POINT OUT in feedback, that prepositions might be part of a phrasal verb!)

Extension: Individually, SS have TWO MINUTES to think of as many additional words that can go in each
category. This task is preparation for:

Board Race: In their teams, set up as a relay race, each team has three minutes to write as many words from
each category on their half of the board – words MUST be legible & correctly spelt. Each team gets a point for
each correct word.

Exam Task: Each team gets the same exam task and ten minutes to work collaboratively to solve the task.
Meanwhile, teacher cleans the board and writes the question numbers down the middle like so:
13
14
15
16
SS then have FIVE minutes to write their answers up on the board. SS get one point for each correct answer.
Teacher only tells teams how many they got right and doesn’t indicate which ones they are!!!.
SS then get three minutes to make corrections – they get a further five points for a correct correction and minus
five points for a wrong correction.

And finally: Backs to the boards again – but this time for the sentences:

COMPLETE THE FOLLOWING TEXT

BY WRITING EACH MISSING WORD

IN THE CORRECT BOX ON YOUR ANSWER SHEET

USE ONLY ONE WORD FOR EACH SPACE

THE EXERCISE BEGINS WITH AN EXAMPLE

© www.teflgeek.net February 2011

Handout #01:

FCE: Paper 2: Use of English: Part 2 – Open Cloze

What are you being tested on?

This part of the Use of English paper tests your structural knowledge of English. Mainly, this means your
grammatical knowledge. It also means your lexical knowledge.

You could be tested on:

Word and Preposition partnerships: e.g. attached to / a way of etc.

Fixed expressions: on his way home / at least / on the other hand etc.

Phrasal Verbs: get on with someone / throw something away etc.

Common Grammatical areas that are tested include:

• Auxiliary verbs (have / do / be / must / can)
• Verb forms (e.g. passives / perfect tenses)
• Personal pronouns (he, she, his, their)
• Relative Pronouns (who, which, what)
• Comparatives (more, less, than, as)
• Articles (a, an, the)
• Determiners (this, these, many, much,)
• Conditionals (if, unless, whether)
• Quantifiers (lots of, a little bit, some, few,)
• Time expressions (before, while, during)
• Linking expressions (and, because, but, however)

Procedure:

1) Read the text all the way through.

2) Read the text again and look at the words in the sentences before and after each gap.
3) Identify the part of speech you need for the gap (e.g. verb, pronoun, article etc)
4) Think about the grammar of the missing word and the words before and after it. (e.g. tense,
singular / plural etc)
5) Fill in the missing words on the question paper
6) You can only use ONE word for each gap
7) A contraction (e.g. don’t / can’t etc) counts as TWO words and is not allowed.
8) Read the text through to check that it makes sense
9) Check your spelling! (a badly spelt word is a wrong answer)
10) Transfer your answers to the answer paper.
11) If in doubt – make an educated guess! NO BLANK ANSWERS!

© www.teflgeek.net February 2011