B2 First Open Cloze Practice
B2 First (FCE) · Reading & Use of English Part 2 · 40 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 B2 First 4, Cambridge University Press
Cambridge English First 2, Cambridge University Press
- Food Preservation - Test 6
- The Homing Instinct - Test 5
- The Importance of Laughter - Test 8
- The Importance of Reading - Test 7
Cambridge English First 3, Cambridge University Press
- Collecting Stamps - Test 3
- Kangaroos - Test 2
- The Joys of Horse Riding - Test 4
- The Origin of Coins - Test 1
First Expert Coursebook, Pearson Education
- Albert Einstein - Module 2
- Angling - Module 8
- Customer tracking - Module 9
- Predicting earthquakes - Module 3
- The Edinburgh Festival - Module 6
- The runaway car - Module 10
First Expert Student's Resource Book, Pearson Education
- Agatha Christie, crime writer - Module 12
- An opera director's upbringing - Module 6
- Blind date - Module 8
- Every picture tells a story - Module 3
- Irn-Bru - Module 7
- Science as a career - Module 5
- The appeal of art - Module 6
- The joy of ice-skating - Module 4
- Thrill of a lifetime - Module 11
Ready for B2 First 4th Edition Workbook, Macmillan Education Limited
- Agatha Christie - Unit 10 - Nothing But the Truth
- Sports Lovers - Unit 2
- The Loch Ness Monster - Unit 9 - Mystery and Imagination
- Why I Travel Alone
Ready for B2 First 4th Edition, Macmillan Education Limited
- A Zero-Waste Lifestyle - Unit 11
- Blue zones® - Unit 1
- Bringing Neighbours Together - Unit 6
- Giga Mansions - Unit 7
- Sleep Myths - Unit 12
- Sporting Superstitions - Unit 9
- Summer Holiday Music Camp - Unit 2
- Wolves and Humans - Ready for Use of English
- Writing a letter of application - Unit 5