Classroom techniques: Cloze (Nation, 1989)

Goal  

• to practise general language knowledge, or specific language features 

Features  

• information distribution – shared 
• ākonga arrangement – individual 
• ākonga focus – meaning and accuracy 
• language modes – reading/writing (can be varied to use listening/speaking) 
• challenge – to work out the missing words 

Materials 

See Materials that come with this resource to download Cloze examples (.doc).

Procedure 

1. Delete words selectively based on vocabulary or grammar that is your focus, for example, to give practice with words associated with a particular topic. Alternatively, delete words at a particular interval (for example, every sixth word) to get random deletions. 
2. Ākonga read the text and write in the missing words, predicting from the context. 
3. Mark the answers accepting any that make sense and discuss reasons for choosing words. 

Kaiako considerations  

• The more words you delete from a text, the more difficult it is to complete. 
• Select a text at the right level for your ākonga. 
• Tell ākonga to read the whole text through before writing in any words, so that they get an idea of what it is about. 
• You may need to teach ākonga how to work out the missing words from the immediate context (looking at the sentence and using grammar clues) and from the wider context (what makes sense). 

Variations  

To make it easier:

• put a line for each letter in the word 
• give the first letter of the word 
• provide a list of words to choose from (more than needed, to provide some challenge). 

To make it harder don’t leave a gap where there is a word missing. 

Change the student arrangement

Put ākonga in pairs or groups to discuss their answers and the reasons for them. 

As a combining arrangement

“Complete the passage”: Ākonga work in pairs. (Nation, 1989, p. 50) One has the cloze passage with words missing, the other has the list of words. They do not look at each other’s papers. The one with the passage reads it out and asks the other for words to fill the gaps. 

Progressive cloze/completion dictation

Make several versions of the text, with more words missing each time. Ākonga either complete the text as a regular cloze (reading) or the kaiako reads the text and ākonga write the words they hear (listening). After correction, the activity is repeated with the same text with more words missing. Continue repeating with more and more missing words. This can be used with a single sentence at lower levels, or when introducing a new sentence structure, as it gives lots of repetition, but ākonga gradually have to hold more and more of it in their heads. (Nation, 1989 p. 24) 

Oral cloze

List ten or more words from a story or other text on the board in a different order to how they appear in the story. Read the story, stopping when you come to one of the words on the board. Ākonga must work out which word is missing. Say the correct word to confirm it. Make this harder by not listing the words that are missing. (Nation, 1989 p. 26) 

Make your own song cloze

Ask ākonga to transcribe the words of a song by listening to it and then to delete words from their transcription to make a cloze exercise for other ākonga. 

Benefits of this technique   

Cloze activities raise awareness of the predicting aspect of reading and demonstrate that you don’t have to know every word in a text to understand it. 

Discussing how they worked out what word to put in can lead to teaching about guessing from context, using the immediate context of the sentence as well as the overall context. 

Evaluation of the task  

• Were ākonga able to provide sensible answers to the cloze? 
• Could they give reasons for their choices? 

References  

Nation, I. S. P. (1989). Language Teaching Techniques. English Language Institute Occasional Publication No. 2 (pp. 24, 26, 50, 67). 

This is part of the resource set "Second language learning tasks".