Use of English - Open Cloze
C2
Cambridge English C2 Exam
For questions 1-8, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap. Use only one word in each gap. Click the gaps to type your answer.
Emotional Resilience
In discussions of success, people often focus (0) ON talent, intelligence or opportunity, as though achievement were simply the result of advantages a person either has or lacks. Yet those who sustain success over time tend to have something else in common: emotional resilience. It is this quality (1) .......... enables them to recover from setbacks, adapt to change and persist when results are slow to appear. Success rarely depends (2) .......... getting everything right at the first attempt; more often, it grows out of the ability to learn from failure without being defined by it. Resilient individuals are not immune (3) .......... disappointment, nor do they deny frustration. Rather, they recognise such feelings, put them (4) .......... perspective and continue working towards their goals. This matters because pressure, criticism and uncertainty are all but inevitable in any demanding field. Those who cannot cope (5) .......... them may perform well briefly, but are unlikely to endure. By contrast, people with resilience are better equipped to maintain motivation, especially (6) .......... progress is uneven. In the long run, success belongs less to those who never struggle (7) .......... to those who know how to respond constructively when they do. Emotional resilience, then, is not merely helpful; it may well be one (8) .......... the clearest predictors of lasting achievement.
About Use of English Open Cloze — Cambridge English C2
In this Cambridge English C2 Use of English Open Cloze exercise you read a short text and think of the one word that best fits each of the 8 gaps.
Open Cloze tests grammar and common fixed expressions — articles, prepositions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs and linking words. Only one word goes in each gap, and it is usually a small grammatical word rather than vocabulary.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many gaps are in this C2 Open Cloze exercise?
There are 8 gaps, and you must write exactly one word in each.
What kind of words go in the gaps?
Usually grammatical words: prepositions, articles, pronouns, auxiliaries, relative pronouns and parts of fixed phrases.
What is the best strategy for Open Cloze?
Read the whole text first for meaning, then look closely at the words around each gap — the answer almost always depends on the immediate grammar.
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What to do
This part consists of a short text with a series of gaps. There are no words from which to choose the answers, candidates have to think of a word which fits the gap correctly.
Errors in punctuation are ignored, although spelling must be correct.
Contractions (e.g. don’t, we’ve, won’t) count as two words. However, can’t is a contraction of cannot, which is one word.
Sometimes, there is more than one correct answer. Cambridge will always account for this and all options will be accepted. However, you should not write more than one answer.
Don't spend time in a word you don't know. Wasting time on this activity might cost you points later in the exam because you won’t have enough time to do other tasks well.
Strategy
- Read the title and the whole text so that you understand what it is about.
- Read the whole sentence in which the gap occurs, to look for clues as to what kind of word you need.
- Check the words before and after each gap and look for grammatical collocations.
- Remember you must write only one word.
- You are never required to write a contraction. If you think the answer is a contraction, it must be wrong, so think again.
- Read the whole text through once you have completed it to make sure you have not missed any connectors, plurals or negatives.