What are ESL Cloze Exercises?

Brief Description

ESL cloze exercises can be used with all levels of ESL students. Simply put, a cloze exercise is a "fill-in-the-blanks" exercise. ESL cloze exercises or worksheets can be used for ESL lessons on verb tenses, articles, prepositions, pronouns, etc.

Basically, cloze exercises can be used for all grammar lessons, teaching any part of speech, or for vocabulary reinforcement.

Length of ESL Exercise

A cloze exercise can consist of single sentences, whole cloze paragraphs or larger cloze passages. The directions will usually say something like, "Fill in the blanks with the correct words." Or if you are specifically testing a particular part of speech, the directions might say something like, "Fill in the blanks with the correct prepositions."

Teachers need to be sure that the directions are clearly written.

Quizzes and Tests

ESL teachers often use cloze worksheets for quizzes and tests. The biggest advantage to teachers is that it saves a lot of time correcting papers. Since most ESL and EFL teachers aren't paid sufficiently (if at all) for prep time, anything that saves time outside of the classroom is a great tool!

Be careful not to rely only on cloze worksheets to teach English to speakers of other languages. Students are often able to choose the correct word, but the real test of a student's progress should be whether he or she can produce the language in speaking or writing.

Examples

A few examples of cloze sentences for the Present Perfect tense are included below.

2. They __________ always __________ each other.

3. I __________ __________ to Mexico many times.

4. __________ you ever __________ squid?

5. __________ she __________ the movie yet?

You can see from these examples of cloze sentences that the student has more than one choice for the main verb. He or she just has to make sure that the correct form of the verb (the past participle) is used. The helping, or auxiliary, verb can only be "has" or "have," depending on the subject. Note that ESL cloze exercises with this much flexibility in the answer should only be used for intermediate to advanced ESL students.

Cloze worksheets for beginning level ESL or EFL learners should limit the possible answers for the blanks. That is, there should be only one correct answer. (This is the trick for the ESL teacher, to make sure that only one answer is possible!)

In some cases, it's appropriate to provide the possible answers for the student to choose from. A list of possible answers should be accompanied by directions that tell the student to "use each answer only once."

Teacher Time-Savers and a Warning!

Creating ESL cloze exercises is mildly time-consuming, but once you have a good exercise you can use it over and over. I've found that some of the fill-in-the-blanks worksheets that I've downloaded from the internet have had mistakes, so try to be sure to proofread the free ESL worksheets you find on the internet. Including any you find on this website!

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