Cloze Test: Online Practice, Examples, Tips & How to Solve it

Cloze Test is a very important topic of the English section for all banking examinations. In order to score good marks in the English Section, it is essential to get a hang of basic information about cloze test, including types of cloze test and approach to solving cloze test questions. You can also practice questions of cloze test exercise from the link provided at the end of this post.

Tips for Cloze Test:

1. Read Thoroughly:

• Read the passage provided very thoroughly to form an idea about the topic.
• Try to read slowly to get the understanding of the text. Once the theme of the text is somewhat clear, your job becomes easier.
• You can then go on to think of the appropriate words that suit the situation being described and proceed to filling in the blanks.

2. Link the Sentences Together:

• Remember that it is a passage with sentences that are connected to each other. Do not make the mistake of treating each sentence like as individual and fill in the blanks accordingly.
• Try to come up with logical connections that link up the sentences together which will make the question easy to solve.

3. The Type of Word to Fill In:
Now look at the blanks carefully and assess the kind of words you have to fill in. Which part of speech would it be? Would it be a noun, a pronoun, a verb, a preposition, a conjunction or an article? For example-

A noun – I forgot to carry my ____ to school. I therefore had to share with my friend.
The logical answer here would be a book or tiffin.

An article – He ate ____ papaya and threw ___ seeds away.
Articles are usually the easiest to answer. Fill in ‘a’ and ‘an’ where talking about general facts and ‘the’ while using it before something specific. Here, the answer is ‘the’ or ‘his’ in the first case and ‘the’ or ‘its’ in the second.

A verb – _____ for half an hour left me breathless. The idea of being breathless suggests something strenuous like ‘exercising’ or ‘running’.

4. Eliminate Options:

• You will often come across a blank that has more than one correct option. List out all these options and try them one by one.
• Use the one option that seems most fitting.
• Instead of getting confused, think of words that are appropriate not only to the given sentence but also fit the context of the entire passage.

5. Go with Frequently Used Words:

Sometimes, you may not be able to decide between two words. In this case, if you see a word in the options that is frequently used with the words around the blank, then pick that option.
For example – Can I have a ____ word with you?

A. swift
B. quick
C. prompt

You can see that the three options nearly mean the same thing. How do you decide which one fits the blank?

Sometimes in English, some words are used more frequently with some others. Like ‘bad habit’, ‘hardly ever’, ‘happy ending’, ‘take a seat’, ‘make room’ etc. In the same way, the words ‘quick’ and ‘word’ are used together frequently. So ‘quick’ should be your answer in this case.

6. Check Tone

The passage is usually written in a certain tone; sometimes narrative, sometimes critical, sometimes humorous. Pick words that fit in with the tone of the passage.

For example –

Jonah ____ down the stairs, bumping along like a quarter in a tumbling dryer.

A. tumbled
B. fell
C. dropped

Clearly, you can use either ‘tumbled’ or ‘fell’ in this blank. But the rest of the sentence is written in a humorous vein. So we try to maintain the tone of the sentence. This is best accomplished by the use of the word ‘tumbled’ as it brings to mind images of people falling funnily.

7. Build up Your Language Skills:

• In terms of the general preparation you can read and read as much as you can.
• The more you read, the better sense you will have of what word goes where.
• It will also help build up your vocabulary. Both these things will go a long way in helping you ace the Cloze Test.

8. Practice:

• In the end, there is no substitute for hard work and practice.
• Try to complete three to four passages each day while preparing and get an insight into your problem areas.
• Work on them and go deliver your best.

Click here for more Cloze Test example questions and answers: Cloze test question and answer pdf

Click here for more Cloze Test questions and answers: Cloze Test Questions and Answers Pdf