Verbal Reasoning · Cloze Sentences
Mind the Gap
Only one of these words belongs in the gap. Keep it, and throw the rest away.
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Why this works
Cloze questions are marked on two things at once, and you have to check both. First comes word class: after "was so" the sentence needs an adjective, a word that describes the path, which is why steeply (an adverb, describing how something happens) and steepness (a noun, the name of a quality) cannot go in however sensible they sound. Second comes meaning, and that is what separates the adjectives that are left: gentle is the right class but the wrong sense, because a gentle path would not force you to rest twice, and mountainous describes a whole region rather than one path. Steep passes both tests, so it is the answer. Read the finished sentence back to yourself every time, because your ear will catch an error your eye slides over.
Helping a child through Mind the Gap
Hints, least revealing first
- Read the whole sentence out loud with the word dropped in. If it sounds wrong, it is wrong.
- The word comes straight after "so", which means it has to describe the path itself, not how something was done.
- Two of the cards are the right kind of word. Pick the one whose meaning explains why you had to stop and rest.
When they finish it: “Gap filled!”
3 11+ skills this exercise practises
Each of these has its own page, with a worked example on it. 1 of the 3 names the mistake that skill attracts.
- Classify a word in contextIdentify the grammatical function of one highlighted word in its sentence.
- Interpret a word in contextInfer the meaning of one word from its sentence and passage context.
- Complete a verbal context gapChoose the word that best satisfies sentence meaning and logic.
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One exercise is a start, not a plan
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