How to Use the Cloze Procedure

One way to gain proficiency in the use of context clues is to use a variation of the Cloze procedure for practice. In this procedure, a person supplies words which have been deleted from a text. This technique demonstrates that people use their knowledge of the world and of language to predict as they read, that reading is a combination of many factors all operating at once. Encourage your students to predict or guess as they read. Do not interrupt them to correct substitutions. Give time for self-correction.

To prepare materials for Cloze exercises, any of the following techniques may be used:

1. Use materials easily read by the students. Delete words that require students to use either parts of speech or meaning clues to replace the word logically. Supply one logical replacement and another choice. Have the students read through the activity, searching for the word that make sense:

   Example:
   

   Just as ____________have fur, birds have ____________.

   (coats, animals) (feathers, wings)
   

2. When learners have used the technique described above and can replace the appropriate words from the choices supplied, provide passages in which every fifth word or every tenth word is arbitrarily deleted and only a letter or two of the correct word is available, perhaps a beginning consonant or consonant blend:

   Example:
   

   With the price of f______ going up all the t______, more people are trying t___ raise some of their f_____ in their own back y______.
   

3. When the learners do well with this task, indicate only the blank with no additional clues. Accept any word that seems a reasonable fit:

   Example:
   

   Instead of grass, you _______ rows of lettuce, tomatoes, ________ beans lining the fences _______ in the biggest city.