C1 Advanced Open Cloze Practice

C1 Advanced (CAE) · Reading & Use of English Part 2 · 52 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 9,426 real gaps, learners get 23% wrong. The most-missed word is "although" (54% wrong; most write "while"). Around one answer in three is a preposition.

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.

Worked example

E-health · Advanced Expert Student’s Resource Book, Pearson Education — A real past-paper text, attempted by 55 learners. Each gap is a different mechanism — but the procedure for finding it never changes.

on (fixed phrase) — 9% wrong, most wrote “in”: “On the market” — available to buy.
such (fixed phrase) — 7% wrong, most wrote “every”: “Such things as” introduces examples.
what (noun clause) — 6% wrong, most wrote “those”: “What will be possible” is the object of “of”.
in (preposition) — 40% wrong, most wrote “for”: “Potential in” marks where the potential lies — the hardest gap; most wrote “for”.
opposed (fixed phrase) — 35% wrong, most wrote “much”: “As opposed to” = in contrast to.
instead (fixed phrase) — 11% wrong, most wrote “because”: “Instead of” = as an alternative to.
like (fixed phrase) — 0% wrong: “Looks like” = resembles — nobody missed it.
which (relative clause) — 4% wrong, most wrote “that”: A non-defining relative clause: “glutamine, which…”.

C1 Advanced Open Cloze Practice

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

The method

The traps

Worked example

All Open Cloze exercises

Advanced Expert Coursebook, Pearson Education

Advanced Expert Student's Resource Book, Pearson Education

C1 Advanced Trainer 2, Cambridge University Press

Cambridge English Advanced 1, Cambridge University Press

Cambridge English Advanced 2, Cambridge University Press

Cambridge English Advanced 3, Cambridge University Press

Cambridge Exam Booster for Advanced, Cambridge University Press

Complete Advanced Workbook, Cambridge University Press

Complete Advanced, Cambridge University Press

Ready for C1 Advanced 4th Edition Workbook, Macmillan Education

Ready for C1 Advanced 4th Edition, Macmillan Education

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