What is a cloze test?

Cloze procedures are tests of vocabulary, spelling and an understanding of the English language. 'Cloze paragraphs test a pupil’s ability to understand the meaning of the words in the word bank, and to put them into context,’ explains Kathryn McMahon of 11 Plus Tutoring Academy. ‘They also depend on understanding the subtleties of language, and being able to decipher a complicated piece of text. If a child has a poor vocabulary, they will struggle with both forms of cloze test.’

As well as testing vocabulary and spelling, cloze tests require children to think critically and analytically about a text, and to think about meaning as they are reading. They also involve a sound knowledge of grammar; for example, to complete a sentence such as, ‘Sarah ran _____ across the field,’ your child will need to identify that an adverb (‘slowly’) fills the gap, and not an adjective (‘slow’).

Cloze tests are sometimes used as a classroom exercise to assess children’s mastery of the English language. Perhaps more importantly, they are also a key part of the CEM (Durham University) 11 plus test that your Year 6 child may take if they are applying for a place at a secondary grammar school. ‘Over the next few years, this test will replace the old style verbal reasoning (VR) 11 plus exam,’ says Kathryn. ‘It is a more robust exam than the old tests, which are narrow in their questioning and unfair for children who haven’t had tuition in the techniques, or who are more mathematically minded.’

• Encourage your child to read the whole passage through first to get a sense of what the text is about.
• For cloze paragraphs, your child should start by filling in the words that they are confident about. ‘By using a process of elimination, they will narrow down the list of words, and can put in those that they are not completely sure about at the end,’ says Kathryn.
• Remind your child to use their knowledge of grammar and syntax. By identifying whether they need to put a noun, verb, adjective or adverb in a particular blank, they can eliminate a lot of possibilities from the word bank.
• For cloze words, your child needs to think about whether they have seen the word before and can remember its spelling. ‘If they don’t know the word, and can’t guess it, they should think about any spelling rules that they could apply which would make the word viable,’ says Kathryn.
• Make sure your child re-reads the whole passage afterwards to check it makes sense.

Try these resources for practising cloze techniques with your child:

• 11+ Essentials: Cloze Tests Book 1: graded practice papers written by experienced tutors, with an online code that lets you compare your child’s performance with other pupils to identify their areas of strength and weakness.
• Contemporary Cloze: cloze exercises both with and without word banks, covering popular topics such as mobile phones, bullying and Harry Potter.
• Create your own cloze exercises: type a passage of text taken from a book that your child is able to read into an online cloze maker to generate your own practice tasks.
• Cloze exercises are included in TheSchoolRun's 11+ learning Journey, a complete at-home 11+ preparation plan for Year 5 children.

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