CLOZE (Cloze Reading)
What the section tests
Cloze items present a short passage with words removed and ask you to restore the one word that best completes each blank. It is a reading test wearing a vocabulary costume: grammar, logic, and cohesion all constrain the answer.
Concepts to master
- Read the whole sentence - ideally the sentence before and after - before choosing.
- Grammatical fit: tense, number, subject–verb agreement, and part of speech narrow the field first.
- Cohesive devices: however, therefore, although, despite, moreover, meanwhile. Decide whether the relationship is contrast, cause, addition, or sequence.
- Collocations: words that travel together - comply with, reasonable suspicion, in custody.
- Reference tracking: what does it or they point to?
- Tone and register: match the passage's level of formality.
Traps
- Distractors that fit grammatically but reverse the logic (because versus although).
- Near-synonyms that break a standard collocation.
- Choices that merely echo a nearby word, which feels right and often is not.
- Ignoring time markers, which fix the tense.
Rule of thumb
Cover the choices, predict your own word, then take the closest match. If two options survive, check the transition logic and the tense.
Worked example
"___ the heavy rain, the search of the field continued until dark." Choices: Because, Despite, Unless, Therefore. "Because" would make the rain a reason for continuing; "therefore" and "unless" break the logic. The relationship is concession, and the blank is followed by a noun phrase, so Despite is correct.