B1 Preliminary for Schools Reading Part 6 – Teacher’s Notes

Description

Students think about how to approach the open cloze task. They are encouraged to think what kinds of
words fill the gaps and how to get clues from the text about which answer is correct.

Time required: 30 minutes

Materials  Student handout 2 (1 cut up per pair)
required:  Student handouts 1 and 3 (one per student)
 Sample Task (one per student)

Aims:  to familiarise students with B1 Preliminary for Schools Reading Part 6

 to introduce students to strategies needed to tackle this task

Procedure

1. Before the class, copy Student handout 2 and cut the words up into slips, so that there
are enough – at least one slip of paper for each set of words.
2. Write the title of the text on the board (Our new skatepark!) and elicit what students think
they are going to read about.
3. Give each student a copy of Student handout 1. Ask them to read it quickly, ignoring
the gaps (allow about 3 minutes for this).
4. Ask students if any of their predictions from step 2 regarding the content were correct.
Establish what the text is about (how a person organised building a new skatepark for
their town).
5. Tell students that they have to try to fill each gap in the text with one word only. Ask
them to look at the text in pairs. Tell them that they MUST put one word in each gap.
None of the gaps can be left blank. Allow about ten minutes for students to fill the gaps
with their partners.
6. Give each pair a slip of paper from Student handout 2. Students decide which gap is
filled by their word and give a reason for their choices.
7. Whole class feedback (see Answer key below). Write the correct answers on the board.
8. Discuss with students:
 How did you decide which word could fill the gap?
 Did you read the word before the gap?
 Did you read the word after the gap?
 Did you read the whole sentence or paragraph to check if the answer made sense?
Elicit that candidates need to read the whole sentence, and that they will get clues about how
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 to fill the gap from the word(s) before and after it, and from the text as a whole (see Answer
key for examples).
9. Focus students’ attention on the words on the board. Elicit what these words have in common
(most of them are examples of ‘grammar’ words). Point out the focus of this task is mostly
grammatical, for example, prepositions, articles, auxiliaries, pronouns, although there may
sometimes be an element of vocabulary as well, e.g. phrasal verbs, linkers and words within
fixed phrases.
10. Give each student a copy of Student handout 3. Students decide in pairs whether each
sentence on the worksheet is true or false.
11. Feedback with the whole class (see Answer key). Discuss any queries the students have
about the task. Ask them if they found it easy or difficult, and reassure them that you will
practise this type of activity more if necessary before the exam.

Additional information
If there are two possible words which can fill a gap, students must only give one answer. If they give
two answers and one of them is incorrect, they will not be given a mark.

Suggested follow-up activities

To improve their performance in this task, groups of students can be given short texts and asked to
create open cloze tests for other groups. One group could target only prepositions, another articles,
etc., or they could gap a mixture of auxiliary verbs, determiners, prepositions, articles, etc.

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Answer key
Procedure step 7
Question 28: Students have to think of the context. Jack and his friends did not have a good
skatepark in their town, so the sentence about a better skatepark must be hypothetical. The
gap is also just before a full sentence and the link to the sentence after it is also missing, so
we need a word that would link the sentences here.
Question 31: Students can argue that a lot of words can fit in this gap; however, they need to
read the whole sentence carefully. In the sentence there are two ideas: a) improve the old
skatepark and b) build a new one. Jack asked people what they wanted, so it would be one
choice or the other.

Student handout 1

27. most (modifier)

28. if/when (conjunction)
29. from (phrasal verb)
30. what (pronoun)
31. or (particle)
32. was (auxiliary verb)

Student handout 3
1. False Candidates should look at the title and read through the text before filling in any
gaps, so that they have an idea of what the text is about.
2. False There are six gaps.
3. False See Additional information. (If you want to give students an example of a gap that
could be filled with different words, look at some words in the text: ‘if’ in the second
paragraph could be replaced with ‘when’)
4. True It is never a good idea to leave a gap unfilled. Candidates don’t lose marks for
wrong answers, but they can’t get a mark if they do not give any answer at all.
5. False Throughout the Reading paper, all answers must be spelled correctly.

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 Student handout 1

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Student handout 2

WHAT IF OR

WAS FROM MOST

Student handout 3

Look at the following sentences and decide whether the information is true or false.

1. True/False
You should start filling in the gaps immediately.

2. True/False
There are 10 gaps for you to fill.

3. If there are two possible answers, you have to True/False

write down both words on the answer sheet.

4. You must always put a word in the gap. True/False

5. True/False
You do not have to spell the answer correctly.

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For further information see our Terms and Conditions.
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