B2 First Open Cloze Practice

B2 First (FCE) · Reading & Use of English Part 2 · 70 free exercises

A text with eight gaps and no options — you supply each missing word yourself. Open cloze is a pure grammar test: articles, prepositions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, linkers and fixed expressions. One word per gap, and spelling must be correct.

Open Cloze: The part that tests grammar, not vocabulary.

8 — gaps
No options — you supply the word
1 mark — per gap
~8 min — of your paper

Your command of the grammar glue — prepositions, articles, pronouns, linkers, auxiliaries and the particles of phrasal verbs. If you reach for an interesting word, you have misread the gap.

What real learners get wrong: Across 2,531 real B2 gaps, learners get 34% wrong. The single most-missed word is "whether" — 91% write "if" instead. The answers are tiny grammar words, never difficult nouns.

The method

Read the whole text first for meaning — some answers depend on a different sentence.
Name the job before the word: preposition? linker? pronoun? auxiliary? That shrinks the candidates.
Look left and right — the trigger is often after the gap ("not only … but", "view … as").
Check the fixed patterns: collocations, phrasal verbs, idioms, correlatives.
Reread the sentence with your word in it — it must fit the grammar and the meaning. Never leave a blank.

The traps

The content-word habit: Filling the gap with a noun or adjective that "sounds right". If your answer is an interesting word, re-check the job of the gap.
Word pairs split in half: Correlatives like "not only … but" — the gap is one half; the other half comes later in the sentence.
The many jobs of "as": The most-tested word: view as, known as, as well as, just as. When no word fits, try "as".
Relatives with prepositions: in which / of whom / whose — writing "which/that" loses the mark when the preposition changed the pronoun.
One word means one word: Contractions count as two, and a right word spelled wrong scores zero — this part gives no partial credit.

All Open Cloze exercises

Cambridge Ready originals · 30

written for this site in the exam format

B2 First Open Cloze Practice

Open Cloze: The part that tests grammar, not vocabulary.

The method

The traps

All Open Cloze exercises

Cambridge Ready originals · 30

Cambridge B2 First 4, Cambridge University Press

Cambridge English First 2, Cambridge University Press

Cambridge English First 3, Cambridge University Press

First Expert Coursebook, Pearson Education

First Expert Student's Resource Book, Pearson Education

Ready for B2 First 4th Edition Workbook, Macmillan Education Limited

Ready for B2 First 4th Edition, Macmillan Education Limited

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