Comprehension Through Cloze Book 4

Detailed drawings and interesting text make up this collection of comprehension activities. The book provides two distinct sections relating to each drawing and text: 1. Cloze activity pages: Each picture-story provides the reader with two exercises. First exercise: The reader is provided with a complete text and shows comprehension by completing the accompanying picture. Second exercise: The reader shows comprehension by completing a cloze task based on the accompanying picture. There is opportunity in some activities for slightly varied answers or drawings. If the answer or drawing provided can be justified by the instruction then it should be seen as acceptable. Cloze comprehension provides an ideal indication of comprehension levels. 2. Comprehension strategy pages: Each text has two additional comprehension pages that focus on a specific comprehension strategy. These pages can be used to teach these comprehension strategies. The texts and activities enable teachers to provide variety to any English language programme. Cloze is a reading comprehension activity in which words are deleted from a text. Readers are required to complete the blanks as they read to construct meaning. When completing a cloze text, readers have to search on either side of the missing word in the sentence to find what should be included. Readers must consider context as well as vocabulary. Cloze is commonly used as an assessment method because of its many advantages. Advantages of cloze: • helps identify reader knowledge and understanding of the reading process; • helps teachers work out the cueing systems readers use to construct meaning; • can assess reader vocabulary and topic knowledge (and can also promote vocabulary production); • helps readers monitor their understanding of a text as they read; • encourages readers to think critically about, and analyse, a text; • reinforces grammatical knowledge because readers need to work out what part of speech is required to fill the gap; and • reinforces syntactical knowledge (the arrangement of words and phrases in a sentence).