How to teach FCE

Use of English Part

Two open cloze
Summary: Exam tips, self-study tips and
stimulating classroom activities for the
Cambridge First Certificate fill the gaps
with one word task.

By: Alex
Case | Audience: Teachers | Category: Tea
ching Tips | Topic: Exam Traps and Tricks
First Published: 6th Mar. 2014 | Last Edited:
25th Jan. 2019

What students have to do in FCE Use of

English Part Two open cloze tasks

After filling gaps with one of four choices

in the Use of English Part One multiple
choice cloze, in this part of the exam
students have just over ten minutes to
come up with their own ideas for one
word to fit into each of the 12 gaps in a
short text, with examples such as “The
silverback gorilla is not generally thought
____ be aggressive, but there are examples
of attacks”.

Contractions such as “can’t” are

considered two words in FCE and so are
never correct answers in this part of the
exam. Students must put a word into every
gap, even in the rare cases when the
sentence would still be correct with just a
blank. If students can think of two words
that could go in a gap (e.g. both “though”
and “although” seem to fit), they should
only write one of them. As in all parts of
the FCE exam, there are no half marks and
any kind of mistake, including a spelling
mistake, leads to no points for that
question. Students can write anything
they like on the question sheet, having to
make sure they transfer their answers to
the separate answer sheet within the time
limit.
What students should do to do well in
FCE Use of English Part Two open cloze
tasks

After they turn the page after finishing the

Use of English Part One multiple choice
cloze task, the first thing students should
probably do is cross of the example gap
(number zero) to make sure they don’t
waste time guessing this one (something
that is surprisingly easy to do!)

Context is less important in this task than

in other Use of English tasks such as the
word formation task in Part Three, as the
gaps mostly have to be filled with
grammar words like prepositions and
auxiliary verbs and usually only word is
possible in each gap. Nevertheless, it is
still worth students reading through the
whole text once for very general
understanding before they start filling the
gaps, for the few gaps that should be filled
with words with more meaning like “must”
and “not”, and to get in good habits for
the rest of the test. There is also no reason
not to read through the whole thing first,
as most students have no problems with
timing in this part of the FCE exam.

Students should then start filling in the

gaps, perhaps starting with the easiest
first. As with most of the Use of English
paper, they should generally trust their
feelings for the language and get used to
filling gaps just from their sense of what
sounds right. They should only change
these answers that instinctively sound
correct if they are absolutely sure that they
have fallen into a trap, e.g. they suddenly
remember a typical grammar mistake that
they have committed. If students can think
of two words that both seem okay in one
gap, they should choose between them
by which word they are most sure is the
answer, which they are sure about the
spelling of, which has a more general
meaning and so is a safe bet, and/or
which they have been taught is more
common in the exam.
For any gaps that students have no
instant ideas about, there are several
stages that they can go through to
work out or guess the answer. The first
thing they should is underline the
words that the word in gap needs to go
together with, usually meaning just a
few words directly before or after the
gap. For example, if the sentence is
“There is no need for the man to ______
given any help”, they only need to
underline “to ______ given”. They should
then think about what kind of word is
missing from the gap, e.g. a verb in the
“to ______ given” example. If they are
having problems working out the part
of speech which needs to go in the gap
from the context, they should be able
to run through a list of probable types
so that they can guess what the missing
word is most likely to be. The most
common kinds of missing words are:

 prepositions/ adverbs like “from”

and “for”
 linking words like “if” and “though”
  determiners like “all” and “any”
 auxiliary verbs like “had” and
“would”
 reference words like “this” and “it”
 relative pronouns like “that” and
“which”
 question words like “which” and
“when”
 time expressions like “yet” and
“last”

Almost all of those words are “grammar

words”, with collocations with grammar
words such as prepositions (e.g. putting
“same” in the gap to go with “the” and
“as”) being a much smaller second group.
In the majority of cases only one word is
an acceptable answer in a gap and there
are very rarely more than two or three
possibilities, so if students think they have
come up with of lots of words that could
go in one gap it might be a sign that they
are on completely the wrong track.

If students know what kind of word it

should be but can’t work out which one,
they should again usually go with their
first thoughts and what sounds right
rather than thinking about it for too long.
There are however some general tips you
can give them on which of particular pairs
of words are more likely to be correct
when completely guessing, e.g. that
“which” is probably a better guess that
“that” because the latter is wrong in non-
defining relative clauses.

If they still can’t think of a likely answer,

they should just choose a word of the
correct type at random, write it with a
question mark on their question sheet,
move onto the next question, transfer it
with their other answers onto the answer
sheet, and come back to it later if they
have time.

If they have extra time when they have

done the whole of the Use of English
paper (including transferring their answers
to the separate answer sheet), they should
read through the text with the words that
they have written in the gaps to make sure
it makes sense and sounds right, again
only changing their answers if they are
absolutely certain about their new choice.

What students should do to prepare

outside the classroom for FCE Use of
English Part Two open cloze

Lots of reading is the best possible

preparation to get the feel for the
language used in Use of English, and that
is even more so for the Part One and Part
Two cloze tasks. As much as possible, this
should be texts similar to those used in
the exam, e.g. magazines rather than
newspapers plus some (mainly high-level
but graded) fiction. To make sure they
notice and learn the right kind of language
while they are reading, they could
underline useful phrases and collocations
in the same way as they probably already
underline new words that they want to
look up in a dictionary, copying these into
a vocabulary notebook after every page,
chapter or reading session.
Some grammar study can also be useful
for Use of English Part Two. Words that
students will need to know the difference
between, studying them if they aren’t sure,
include:

Prepositions/ Adverbs

 at/ in
 in/ into
 as/ like
 by/ until
 ago/ before

Linking words

 because/ so
 although/ but
 although/ despite

Determiners

 all/ every
 few/ little
 any/ some
 a/ the
 it’s/ its
  another/ other
 so/ such

Auxiliary verbs

 will/ would
 it/ this
 them/ themselves
 anything/ everything

Reference words

 that/ which

Question words

 what/ which

Time expressions

 during/ while
 during/ for
 for/ since

There is also no substitute for loads of

timed exam practice. After doing a paper
and checking their answers, students
should make sure that they understand
why their wrong answers are incorrect
(from a detailed answer key, by
researching in a grammar book or on the
internet, or by asking someone). They then
probably need to memorise useful phrases
or sentences, especially ones which they
got wrong or only got right by guesswork.
Luckily, this memorisation is especially
easy with this task, as students can simply
fill their vocabulary notepads with lists of
phrases or sentences with blanks on the
left hand side page and the missing words
on the right, testing themselves on their
memory of those missing words. They can
also make up similar blanked example
sentences for any other useful phrases
they come across and want to memorise,
e.g. when looking at writing model
answers or studying grammar.

If students are having problems with

choosing which language is likely to be
worth learning from sources other than
past papers, tips include only using an
intermediate-level monolingual dictionary
(possible to spot by their medium
thickness) and/ or to get a specific FCE
grammar book.

Classroom activities for FCE Use of

English Part One open cloze

The most important thing in the classroom

is to always do exam practice properly,
including forcing students to quickly read
through text first with pens down and
doing all tasks timed. Although students
comparing answers in pairs before looking
at the key can be useful, I’d never actually
do these tasks in pairs, because it will
teach students to doubt those instinctive
feelings for the language. When checking
their answers, students should be strongly
encouraged to ask why their own wrong
answers aren’t possible in the gaps.

Easy ways to start tackling Use of

English Part Two open cloze

The best way of making this task

manageable when students first come
across it is to give them a version that has
been reduced down to one language
point such as determiners, preferably a
language point which have just studied in
another way. It’s best to make what they
have to fill in the gaps of just one single
text (as in the exam) if possible, but using
several long gapped sentences is also
okay.

Another way of having a really easy start is

to give students a text that they have just
seen in full, e.g. a writing model answer or
reading text, but this time with gaps in it.
This can be combined with the idea above
of testing just one language point such as
prepositions.

After getting students to do an exam task,

it can be useful to give them mixed up
answers to check their answers with and
put into the gaps that they weren’t sure
about. This can also be a good way of
introducing words which are often the
answers in the exam, by giving them a
fuller list of words to choose and check
their answers from, for example all the
answers from the answer key of one or
two exam practice books.

An even easier start, but one which is also

useful practice, is to give them a whole
text with all the correct answers in and
simply get them to underline the words
around the gap that make that word
necessary, maybe also identifying the
parts of speech of both the underlined
words and the word in the gap. For
example, if one sentence is “We are
worried ____ the local environment” they
can underline just “worried” and the gap,
and maybe write “adjective” and
“preposition” above that line.

A slightly more challenging starter task is

to give them a text with wrong answers in
all the gaps, asking them to correct the
answers and then discuss why those
answers are not possible. If you want this
to still be an easy start, make sure most of
the wrong answers are fairly obvious
mistakes.
FCE Use of English Part Two open cloze
games

Students challenging each other

Students setting tasks for each other is a

great way of getting them to really analyse
the task that they will have to go through
in the exam. One approach is to give
them a complete short text and get them
to make exam tasks from it, e.g. give them
an exam text with answers written out
again with no gaps as a Word
document on laptops. They work in twos
or threes to try to create tasks by finding
words that can’t be replaced by anything
else and taking them out to make 12 gaps.
They pass the tasks that they have made
onto other groups, who get one point for
any correct word that they can find. The
team who created the task loses one point
if any other team finds two or more words
that could fit in one of the gaps that they
made.

The opposite way of approaching tasks

where students challenge each other is to
give them the words that should go in the
gaps so that they can create sentences
around them to test other teams with,
making sure each gap can only be filled by
that one word. You can give them phrases
that they should make sentences out of
(e.g. “have a good time”, maybe taken
from real exam tasks), they can be given
the first and last words of the sentence
that they should write (“I
_________________on ___________ own”), or
they can be given just the single words to
go in the gaps (“a”) and be left to entirely
come up with their own ideas of example
sentences to test the other teams with.

FCE Use of English Part Two open cloze

card games

If you are going to give them just single

words from gaps in exam tasks, this can be
turned into card games. One card game is
a version of setting each other exam-style
questions as explained above. Make a
pack of cards with different words on each
of the cards, with one pack per group of
three or four students. Students deal out
all the cards and then take turns making a
gapped sentence with the word from one
of their cards missing from it. If at least
one of their partners gets the answer
wrong and their partners then agree that
the word on their card was in fact the only
possible correct answer in that gap, they
can discard that card and get one point.

Perhaps as a continuation if they get stuck

with that quite tricky setting each other
questions game, students can also just try
to create sentences where the word on
one of their cards is the only possible one
in the gap. They lay one of their cards face
up on the table and tell their partners their
example sentence with it, and if they all
agree that it is correct and that it is the
only word that fits, they can leave it there
and score a point. To make this last game
possible with all common Use of English
Part Two words, some cards will actually
have to have two or more expressions that
basically mean the same thing (e.g.
“nevertheless” and “nonetheless”) on
them.

FCE Use of English Part Two open cloze

races

Coming up with example sentences can

also be done as a team race. The teacher
shouts out a word that comes from a real
gap in an exam task and teams rush to
come up with and shout out a sentence
where only that word fits the gap, for
example shouting out “The bread rolls are
beep/ blank/ lalala produced as we speak”
if the teacher gives them the word “being”.
If no other team challenges them on the
accuracy of that sentence or whether only
that word fits the gap, the first team to
shout out a sentence scores one point.
The teacher can then comment on that
sentence (without that affecting the score),
or all teacher comments can be left until
the end of the game.

If another team makes an accusation of

the sentence being wrong or having more
than one possible answer in the gap, the
challenger gets a point if the accusation is
correct and the other teams continue
racing to come up with a correct sentence.
If the challenge is incorrect (either because
the sentence is perfect or because the
sentence is wrong in a different way to
what they allege), then the group who
came up with the sentence gets an
additional point. For the “only one word
possible in the gap” part of this game to
work, you may have to shout out pairs of
words which are almost the same like
“though and although”, or you can stick to
words which have a more unique role like
“be”.

A similar game can also be played with

groups coming up with as many correct
example sentences as they can within a
time limit (e.g. three minutes). Their
sentences are then passed to another
group, who can cross off any sentences
which are not correct or in which other
words could go into the gap, with perhaps
points for accusations as explained above.
To make it more challenging and more like
real exam questions, you can give students
the first and last words of the sentences
that they should make as well as the word
that should go in the gap, e.g. “We
____________ being ____________ place”.

Students can also be asked to come up

with example sentences that illustrate a
particular use of a word, e.g. “at” just for
points in time or space.

FCE Use of English Part Two open cloze

disappearing text games

Give students three or four sentences from

an exam text with the gaps filled and the
text rewritten so that they can’t see where
the gaps used to be. The text can be put
up on the board, in a table on a worksheet
with one word in each box, or on laptops
as a Word document. The text will be
made to disappear one word at a time
with use of the eraser, scraps of paper
placed on top of each word, or the delete
button on their computers. This game can
also sometimes work with just a printed
text and a very heavy black marker pen or
Tippex pen.

In the easiest game, students just delete

the text one word at a time, trying to
remember the whole text, including the
deleted words, each time. The extract that
they remember will obviously need to be
shorter than a whole exam text, but if you
want to then go on to give them the real
text it may as well be the whole thing,
making the bit they (probably) remember
an easy start to a more realistic exam task.

There is also a more challenging version of

this game, one which also teaches more
about the exam. Students are only allowed
to delete words to make gaps if they can
find somewhere in the text in which no
other words could go. For example, if one
sentence in their text is “The sunlight
shining through the window hits you like a
slap in the face”, they can delete “like” but
not “face”. They can be asked to
remember the whole text each time as
suggested above, or the whole challenge
can be just finding words which can be
deleted for points. You can also have
points for challenging people for deleting
the wrong words (with points off for bad
accusations). If you aren’t including the
memorising bit, you can use an entire
exam text (rewritten with the words in the
gaps left in the same as the rest of the
text) rather than just a few sentences.

FCE Use of English Part Two open cloze

longer and longer examples game

Put students into pairs and give them

different exam texts or example sentences.
They should take turns reading out words
around the gap, starting at just one word
and making what they read out longer and
longer one word at a time until their
partner gets the right answer. For
example, if the sentence is “I need it back
_____________ Friday at the latest” they can
read out to their partner “blank Friday”,
“back blank Friday”, then “it back blank
Friday”, etc. To make them think more
carefully about what kinds of words are
useful to work out what goes in the gaps,
you can ask them to give their partner the
most useful words first, giving them points
for their partner getting the answer
quickly. Alternatively, you can ask them to
give the least useful words first, giving one
point for each time their partner guesses
wrongly.

FCE Use of English Part Two open cloze

hangman games

These games are kind of the opposite of

the others in this article, as this time the
job of students is to guess what goes
around the gap rather than what goes in
the gap. As there are almost infinitive
numbers of sentences that could go
around a typical word for a gap such as
“it”, it’s obviously necessary to turn this
into a game, and the most suitable games
are both based on the old spelling game
Hangman.

In the game that is most similar to the

original Hangman spelling game, give
students the whole of or part of an
example sentence blanked out letter by
letter and with just the word from the
original gap written in the middle, e.g. “_
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ just _ _ _ _ _ _” for the
exam phrase “we arrived ______ in
time”. Students try to guess the phrase or
sentence letter by letter. You can take
points off for wrong guesses as in the
original Hangman game, or you can give
points for right guesses and put in clues
when they guess wrongly. With the latter
approach, you can also get them to guess
specific letters in specific gaps rather than
just shouting out random parts of the
alphabet. The clues when they guess
wrongly both keep scoring in the game
meaningful (as that leaves fewer points
that they can get by the end of the game)
and stops them getting stuck.

With the giving points for correct guesses

version, you can also get students
guessing whole words to fill in a text with
one gap for each word rather than each
letter (“_______ ___________ just ______
_______”). Again, you can get students to
guess particular gaps or just let them
shout out words that they think must be in
there somewhere. This version can also be
played with an entire exam text, meaning
just twelve words are given and the rest of
the text is blank, making it kind of like the
opposite of the disappearing text games
mentioned above.

FCE Use of English Part Two open cloze

many chances to guess games

Give put Student A and Student B

worksheets listed by missing word and
with at least three examples for each word,
e.g. “I need to buy ____ least ten”, “Why
don’t we meet ____ 10 o’clock?” and “What
time will you arrive ____ the station?” for
“at”. Students take turns reading out
examples one by one (saying something
like “blank”, “beep”, “tralala” or “dot dot
dot” to represent the gaps) until their
partner gets the right answer, with only
one guess allowed per clue. If the student
who is speaking runs out of examples
before their partners get the right missing
word, they should make up their own
blanked example sentences to help them.

The examples that you put on the

worksheets should obviously be things
that students might need to several
guesses to get right, such as prepositions
and determiners. The example sentences
can also be ones which are suitable for
other parts of the exam such as comparing
and speculating phrases for Speaking Part
Two.

As students usually end up needing to

make a few example sentences for each
other in this game, this can be used as a
lead-in to the challenging each other
games explained above.

More challenging practice of FCE Use of

English Part Two

Although it obviously isn’t a priority with

students who are struggling and/ or lack
confidence, it can be worthwhile to push
the task above the actual level of what
they are asked to do in the exam in order
to teach things that they can then take
back to the exam tasks. For example, many
of the tasks below force students to try to
make sense of the text as well, in a way
that is sometimes necessary in exam tasks.
Doing something even more difficult also
makes the real exam cloze seem like a nice
easy task when they go back to it!

One way of making the exam open cloze

tasks more challenging is to give a text
with no gaps, e.g. a real exam task typed
out so that the words are missing but
there is no space between the words
before and after (rather than with
numbered gaps as in the exam). Students
read through the text to find places where
there seem to be words missing, trying to
identify first the place where words need
to go and then the missing words.

Something similar can be done with

wrong words rather than missing words
where the gaps would be. A fairly easy
version of this is to mix up the correct
answers (i.e. put the right answers in the
wrong gaps) and type up the text so that it
looks like one continuous text. Students
must then identify which words don’t fit
the text in the places they are, then swap
all the words around. This can be made
easier by getting them to just swap pairs
of words over, so that they know if they
think that the word “at” should go where
“being” is, then “being” must go where
they have just taken “at” from.

For the ultimate challenging task, the gaps

can be filled with common wrong answers,
e.g. putting “the same than” into the text.
As in the variations above, the teacher
then needs to type up the text so that it
just looks like one continuous text like
those in the reading paper. Students must
identify wrong words and replace them
with the right answers.

Finally, you could keep the gapped format

of the exam but simply make a more
challenging task, e.g. one designed to
elicit loads of common errors. As should
be the case in any task you create, try to
ensure that the kinds of words which they
need to put in the gaps are similar to
those in the actual exam (e.g. the right
proportion of auxiliary verbs), as this will
help students practise choosing the right
kinds of words to guess with when they
have no idea. If you find it too difficult to
create a whole single text to introduce all
the points that you want to cover, try to
still make a few examples that could be
wrong due to meaning as well as because
of grammar.

This idea of tasks with more challenging

gaps can also be combined with the
putting wrong answers in idea that is
suggested in the easy start section near
the beginning of this article, this time
making sure most or all of the gaps are
filled with words which students have
problems telling the difference between
like “at” and “in”.

Other uses of FCE Use of English Part

Two open cloze
Open cloze is a great way of presenting
and practising grammar and useful
phrases for the speaking and writing
papers, for example giving students thirty
gapped phrases which are useful for FCE
informal emails or fifteen useful sentences
in the passive voice to fill in. To make this
good Use of English practice at the same
time, you should try to limit the gaps
mainly to grammar words that are likely to
be in gaps in the exam open cloze tasks,
such as “that” and “when”.

After doing the cloze tasks, it’s probably

best if you then test students on their
memory and understanding of those
example sentences in some other way. For
example, you can give students just the
words from the gaps and a description of
the kind of sentence they should produce,
getting them to remember or come up
with their own ideas for example
sentences using them, then looking back
at the original sentences to compare.