English - How to Teach Comprehension Cloze

[worldangel]

I have to say first that I am not yet a parent, but I am an English teacher :oops:


I find it very challenging to teach this particular area. I have told my pupils to read the entire passage and underline the clue and drawing arrow to point to the blank that it corresponds to. So far it doesn't seem to help much...the kids seemed to keep looking out for the 'wrong' clue and hence, they ended up with the wrong answer...

And yes, they kept losing marks cos of careless mistakes related to the wrong tense used or spelling mistake...

[kitty2]

worldangel:

I have to say first that I am not yet a parent, but I am an English teacher :oops:


I find it very challenging to teach this particular area. I have told my pupils to read the entire passage and underline the clue and drawing arrow to point to the blank that it corresponds to. So far it doesn't seem to help much...the kids seemed to keep looking out for the 'wrong' clue and hence, they ended up with the wrong answer...

And yes, they kept losing marks cos of careless mistakes related to the wrong tense used or spelling mistake...

I think the problem is they don't know where to get the clue.Do you have any idea to tackle this big problem?

Thanks for sharing

[tisha]

westmom:

Lots of reading on \"formal\" articles will help..My approach was:
a) read entire passage to have a feel of content first
b) read the paragraph and underline clues
c) choose 2 or more suitable words and write neatly on top in pencil
d) Select the best word by \"reading aloud\" softly because sometimes the eyes are misleading. Write in your choice.
e) if get stuck, just select one and move on (get back if got time later)
f) Read the whole passage again after putting the words and check for grammar/spelling...common mistake here and a waste of marks lost on this..

:thankyou: westmom for sharing these tips. I've taught this to my DS and his score in this component has significantly increased, by religiously following these tips. Once all the blanks are filled in, re-reading the whole passage helps to eliminate the grammatical errors due tense/number etc.

[janet88]

Jean.H:

This is one big-headache area! It is very hard to teach, I tried using newspapers, it helped a little, especially if you put similar stories together, like all accident type together, all health type..but the improvement is not that drastic..I think this component, the children must read and read and read!

Agree with you...very tough to 'teach' this component of English but yet still have to find a way to handle it...Comprehension cloze (fill in the blanks) is 15 marks !!!
Sometimes it can be so tough to think of a suitable word but I tell my son to read and read that sentence again to see if there might be any clue along the way. If not, just have to make do with whatever he can think of. Just like last night, I was just going through a cloze with him on NETS.

[tisha]

janet_lee88:

Jean.H:

This is one big-headache area! It is very hard to teach, I tried using newspapers, it helped a little, especially if you put similar stories together, like all accident type together, all health type..but the improvement is not that drastic..I think this component, the children must read and read and read!

Agree with you...very tough to 'teach' this component of English but yet still have to find a way to handle it...Comprehension cloze (fill in the blanks) is 15 marks !!!
Sometimes it can be so tough to think of a suitable word but I tell my son to read and read that sentence again to see if there might be any clue along the way. If not, just have to make do with whatever he can think of. Just like last night, I was just going through a cloze with him on NETS.

At upper pri level the clues may not be in the same sentence, they could be in the previous sentence or the next one. There are times when the clue is in another paragraph altogether.
I do not know how your child is doing in this area, my DS was getting around 8-9 out of 15. Now with westmom's tips he is able to get
11-12. It can be very stressfull if you aim for a perfect score.

[Happy Mama]

westmom:

Lots of reading on \"formal\" articles will help..My approach was:

a) read entire passage to have a feel of content first
b) read the paragraph and underline clues
c) choose 2 or more suitable words and write neatly on top in pencil
d) Select the best word by \"reading aloud\" softly because sometimes the eyes are misleading. Write in your choice.
e) if get stuck, just select one and move on (get back if got time later)
f) Read the whole passage again after putting the words and check for grammar/spelling...common mistake here and a waste of marks lost on this..

Thanks for sharing, Westmom. I used to take this approach when I was in school but somehow, it slipped my mind after so many years and I forgot to \"impart these techniques/tactics\" to my DD.

I will certainly try it out on her later this evening, and hopefully I will be able to see an improvement in her Cloze Passage.

Thanks, once again.

[janet88]

tisha:

janet_lee88:

[quote=\"Jean.H\"]This is one big-headache area! It is very hard to teach, I tried using newspapers, it helped a little, especially if you put similar stories together, like all accident type together, all health type..but the improvement is not that drastic..I think this component, the children must read and read and read!

Agree with you...very tough to 'teach' this component of English but yet still have to find a way to handle it...Comprehension cloze (fill in the blanks) is 15 marks !!!
Sometimes it can be so tough to think of a suitable word but I tell my son to read and read that sentence again to see if there might be any clue along the way. If not, just have to make do with whatever he can think of. Just like last night, I was just going through a cloze with him on NETS.

At upper pri level the clues may not be in the same sentence, they could be in the previous sentence or the next one. There are times when the clue is in another paragraph altogether.
I do not know how your child is doing in this area, my DS was getting around 8-9 out of 15. Now with westmom's tips he is able to get
11-12. It can be very stressfull if you aim for a perfect score.[/quote]Yup, at upp levels, clues are not obvious and if lucky, will appear in next paragraph. I'm working with son to improve his cloze/editing/comprehension OE.
Your son can get 8-9 correct...that's good. I dare not aim for perfection but your son's score is good enough esp if the theme is on history or some unusual topic.

[ANobleNerd]

Compre Cloze is one of those things that need a lot of general background preparation to excel in.


This means that the child need to read avidly - and read a lot of different types of texts at that.

Of course, once the child have that rich input, Westmom’s methods or any other formalised methods can help kids puzzle out the cloze.

The cloze tests whether the kids can comprehend the passage using internal text cues, the text type and their understanding of what the passage is about. Again, this won’t be easy unless the child is exposed to a text rich environment, and reads widely.

[Yerdua]

Sorry, what’s the difference between vocabulary close and comprehension close? Thanks!

[janet88]

Yerdua:

Sorry, what's the difference between vocabulary close and comprehension close? Thanks!

Vocabulary Cloze is something like synonyms...choosing words (MCQ) closest in meaning to underlined words in passage.
For Comprehension cloze, the child is supposed to fill in the blank with a suitable word.