Cloze questions are my favourite type of question because you can easily get quick marks for them and it reminds me of primary school activities when you used to find the missing letter.  Cloze questions are common in the 11+ CEM test so we’ll go through one here and show you the approach to answer one.

Here’s the question:

Find the missing four letters that need to be added to the following words so that it completes the sentence.

The co_ _ _ uction of the building was d _ _ _ed due to severe weather.

So… how do you solve it?

1) Association of words

Remember in the sentence building questions in verbal reasoning we grouped words together.  This is kind of the same, except the words are missing.  What word starts with c that relates to a building.  Construction!

And what would happen to the construction of a building if there was severe weather?

destroyed, demolished, delayed….

We know destroyed and demolished won’t fit so delayed is the correct answer.

Simple right?  The answer is the construction of the building was delayed due to severe weather.

How can you improve your child’s ability in this area?  Quite simply - reading.  Reading will allow your child to get used to what words pair well together and provides them with more exposure to different sentences.