Six cloze errors that all feel right by ear
Marta, 17, has just done a 10-item cloze on a text about a school exchange in Dublin. She scored 4/10. Her wrong answers include: 'I hope I don't do a mistake at the host family's house' (target: make); 'My host mother is very sensible to noise, so I keep the music low' (target: sensitive); 'Actually I live in Girona, but I study in Barcelona' (target: currently, in a sentence about her present routine); 'We attended to a concert at the National Concert Hall' (target: attended); 'I want to take part of the school choir' (target: in); and 'I am used to get up early' (target: used to getting). She knows the meanings of the words but says she 'goes by ear'. The teacher has 15 minutes to turn these errors into transferable rules before the next mock.
1. Correct the six items and classify each error by type.
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| Item | Correction | Error type |
|---|---|---|
| do a mistake | make a mistake | verb-noun collocation |
| sensible to noise | sensitive to noise | false friend (Catalan 'sensible' = sensitive) |
| Actually I live in Girona | Currently I live in Girona | false friend/discourse: 'actually' means 'in fact', not 'at present' |
| attended to a concert | attended a concert | verb pattern: 'attend' takes a direct object; 'attend to' means deal with |
| take part of | take part in | dependent preposition |
| used to get up | used to getting up | 'be used to' + -ing; 'used to' + infinitive means a past habit |
Reasoning: the first, fourth, fifth and sixth items are patterns, not meanings. Marta can learn them as chunks. The second and third are cross-linguistic traps: Catalan 'sensible' and 'actualment' mislead her, so she needs contrastive examples, not definitions.
2. Design a 15-minute classroom sequence that turns these errors into rules Marta can transfer.
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0-3 min: sort, not explain. Give Marta the six wrong chunks and ask her to put them into three groups: verb + noun, preposition, and 'sounds like a Catalan word'. She will probably create the groups herself, which makes the rules memorable.
3-7 min: collocations and verb patterns. Drill 'make a mistake / make a decision / make progress' against 'do homework / do sport / do research'. Then contrast 'attend a concert' with 'attend to a problem'. Use Marta's own sentence about Dublin.
7-11 min: false friends. Write two minimal pairs on the board: 'sensible/sensitive' and 'actual/current'. Elicit: 'My host mother is sensitive to noise'; 'Currently I live in Girona'. Ask her to write one true sentence for each.
11-14 min: dependent prepositions. Give 'take part ___', 'be interested ___', 'be good ___' and 'be used to ___'. She completes them aloud and then in writing.
14-15 min: exit ticket. She writes four original sentences using four of the corrected chunks. The teacher checks only those four.
3. Which of the six errors is least likely to be fixed by a simple rule, and what should the teacher do instead?
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'Actually' for 'currently' is the least rule-friendly. The two words are not related by a single grammatical pattern; the problem is discourse meaning and frequency. 'Actually' corrects or contradicts an assumption ('Actually, I don't live in Girona'), while 'currently' places the situation in present time. Marta needs to see the contrast in context, not memorise a definition.
Instead: give her two short dialogues. In one, a person corrects a false belief ('Actually, the course starts on Monday'); in the other, a person describes a temporary present situation ('Currently, I'm living with a host family'). Ask her to label which is which, then write one sentence of each type about her own life. Follow up by noticing 'currently' in reading texts for a week, because recognition in context is what will make the choice automatic.