about cloze texts


• A cloze text is a text from which words have been removed and replaced with blank spaces. The person taking the test tries to 'close' the text by putting a correct word into each of the blank spaces.

• The most important use of cloze texts is to test reading ability — but cloze texts can also be useful as teaching tools, particularly for introducing and reinforcing vocabulary.

• There are several ways of selecting the words to be removed and several ways of deciding which answers are 'correct.'

• Words can be removed at random. They can be removed by 'counting' — for example, every fifth or seventh word can be removed. Alternatively, function words or 'content' words can be removed. Removing function words produces texts that can be used to test or teach grammar; removing content words produces texts that can be used to test or teach vocabulary

• Traditionally, there are two methods of deciding which answers are correct — two ways of 'marking' a cloze text in other words: (1) only the 'exact' word — the same word that was in the original text is counted as correct; (2) any 'acceptable' word — any word that preserves the meaning of the original text — is counted as correct.

• It seems that each of these methods has serious disadvantages. If only exact words are marked correct, then the method of marking the test must be kept secret from the people taking it . If they are told how it is to be marked, they will complain that it is unfair to reject answers that 'make sense' just because the word put in the blank is different from the word in the original text.

• If any acceptable answer — any answer that shows understanding — is marked correct, then marking the text becomes a time-consuming and 'subjective' job. There will be many cases where it is hard to say whether an answer is acceptable or not. And there will be many cases where two markers disagree about whether or not an answer is correct.

• These disadvantages may not be too serious, from the point of view of someone who is using cloze texts for testing, but they are certainly serious from the point of view of someone who wants to use them as a teaching tool. If students are going to learn anything from filling in the blank spaces in a cloze text, they must be told, when they are finished, what the correct answers are. And if cloze texts are going to have any practical value to a teacher there must be definite and uncontroversial ways of correctly filling in the blanks.

• It seems to me that 'multiple choice' cloze texts — ones in which students are given a limited range of choices — are a sensible compromise between the two 'extremes' of exact-word marking and acceptable-word marking. As with texts where the exact word is the only correct answer, multiple-choice texts can be marked quickly and objectively but there is no need to fear that those taking the test will feel they have been treated unfairly when they are told what the correct answers are.

• In the most common sort of multiple-choice test, in online materials at least, a short list of choices is offered for each of the blank spaces. It seems to me preferable to do as I have done in the "Barry Greenstein Cloze Text" and to offer one long list of choices for the whole text. In this way it is possible to avoid the standard difficulty of finding a list of choices all of which are plausible but only one of which is correct.

• And I think the single-list method has another advantage over the short-list method: the process of repeatedly scanning a long list of words, thinking about what they mean, perhaps looking them up in a dictionary, and trying to decide if their meaning is right for a particular blank space,seems to be more conducive to vocabulary development than the process of looking, once, at many short lists and, in some cases at least , more or less selecting one of the items without much thought.


suggestions for using cloze texts