Cloze Test

There are two short passages, each with five blanks. The blanks test a mix of vocabulary, tenses, linkers, prepositions and relative words — so the cloze test is like the first sixteen questions, but in context. The context is your biggest advantage: it tells you the topic, the tense and the logic of the text.

• Read the whole passage quickly first to understand the topic and the main tense (is it about the past, or a general fact?).
• Tense blanks: keep the tense consistent with the rest of the passage unless a time expression shows a change.
• Linker blanks at the start of a sentence connect it to the previous sentence: ask "Is this a result, a contrast or an addition?"
• Preposition blanks: look at the word before the blank (linked to, rely on, an increase in).
• Relative blanks: check whether the relative word is the subject, the object, or part of a prepositional phrase (during which, in which).