# PSLE Chinese Cloze Passage: Getting the Five Blanks Right

> The PSLE Chinese cloze passage (短文填空) is five blanks in a short story, 10 marks. Why children who know every word still miss, and a read-first routine that fixes it.

更新 / Updated: 2026-11-03


## 要点 / Key points
- The cloze passage (短文填空) is the second section of PSLE Chinese Paper 2: one short passage with five blanks, four options for each blank, 2 marks a blank and 10 marks in all.
- In recent papers the passage has been a story of about 230 to 300 characters in three or four paragraphs. The options are mostly two-character words, and in some years the last blank has been a four-character idiom.
- Unlike the one-sentence questions in language use, the clue for a blank is often in another sentence, so the whole passage has to be read once before any blank is filled.

The cloze passage is worth only 10 marks, yet it is one of the most frustrating sections of PSLE Chinese Paper 2. Five blanks, four options each, and a child who knows every word on the page still comes back with two or three wrong. The words are rarely the problem. Where the child looks for the answer is.

## What the section looks like

| Item | In the paper |
| --- | --- |
| Place in the paper | Paper 2, section 2: questions 16 to 20, straight after language use |
| Marks | Five blanks at 2 marks each, 10 marks, 5% of the PSLE Chinese total |
| Passage | A short story or fable of about 230 to 300 characters, in three or four paragraphs |
| Options | Four for each blank, mostly two-character words of the same kind |
| Last blank | In some recent years, a four-character idiom |
| Time to give it | About 8 minutes |

*Section, number of questions and marks from SEAB's PSLE Chinese syllabus (0005). Passage length and options as in recent PSLE papers. The time suggestion is ours.*

SEAB describes the section in one line: choose the most suitable answer from the content of the passage and the meaning of the context. The second half of that line is the whole section.

## Why children who know the words still get them wrong

In the language-use questions just before it, each question is one sentence, and the clue that rules out the wrong options is in that sentence. In the cloze passage the clue is often in the next sentence, or the one before. A child who fills each blank as they reach it is answering with half the information.

> 小文第一次上台表演，心里很（　　）。可是一走上台，看到妈妈在台下向她微笑，她就不怕了。
> Options: 紧张 (nervous), 兴奋 (excited), 难过 (sad), 生气 (angry)

Read alone, the first sentence takes 紧张 or 兴奋 equally well, because a first performance can make a child either. The second sentence settles it: 她就不怕了 (then she was no longer afraid) means she was afraid before. The answer is 紧张, and it was decided by a sentence with no blank in it.

- All four options are real words, usually of the same kind: four feelings, four actions, four ways of doing something. Knowing what each word means is necessary, but it does not decide the answer.
- Some options fail on the partner word rather than the meaning. Chinese words come with fixed partners, such as 养成习惯 (form a habit) and 克服困难 (overcome a difficulty). An option that means roughly the right thing but does not go with the word beside it is wrong.

## A five-step routine

1. Read the whole passage once and fill nothing. Know who it is about, what goes wrong, and how it ends.
2. Go back to the first blank and read one sentence either side of it. Mark the clue: a turning word such as 可是 or 却 (but), a cause word such as 因为 or 所以, a feeling, or what the character does next.
3. Try all four options in the blank, not only the first one that seems to fit, and cross out each one that clashes with the clue.
4. Check the partner word: does the option go with the noun or verb next to it?
5. When all five are filled, read the passage through once more with the answers in. If the story stops making sense somewhere, one of the blanks there is wrong.

When the last blank is a four-character idiom, all four options are idioms, such as 恍然大悟 (suddenly understanding), 喜出望外 (delighted by something unexpected) or 争先恐后 (rushing to be first). Read what the character does straight after the blank; the idiom has to match it. The idioms P6 papers test most often are listed in the idiom guide.

## Practising at home

- Cover the options. On a passage the child has already done, cover the four options and ask what kind of word goes in each blank: a feeling, an action, a description. Then uncover them and choose. This trains looking for the clue before looking at the words.
- Ask for the clue. For every answer, right or wrong, the child points to the words in the passage that decided it. An answer with no clue behind it is a guess, even when it is right.
- Keep the wrong ones as pairs: the word chosen, the word that fits, and the clue sentence. A page of these is worth more than a page of new words.

## Practising on AceLah

AceLah has original cloze passages for P3 to P6, written to the MOE syllabus. Each blank is marked as soon as the child answers and comes with an explanation, and wrong answers go into the mistake book for another try. The full PSLE mock papers include a cloze passage in the real position, between language use and Comprehension 1.

[Try a P6 cloze passage](https://acelah.com/explore/6/%E7%9F%AD%E6%96%87%E5%A1%AB%E7%A9%BA) — Original P6 cloze passages, marked instantly, with an explanation for every blank.

**Related reading**
- [PSLE Chinese exam format: the three papers](https://acelah.com/guide/psle-chinese-exam-format)
- [PSLE Chinese Paper 2: how to split the 100 minutes](https://acelah.com/guide/psle-chinese-paper-2-time-management)
- [P5 Chinese vocabulary cloze: why marks leak](https://acelah.com/guide/p5-chinese-vocabulary-cloze-losing-marks)
- [The Chinese idioms P6 papers keep testing](https://acelah.com/guide/psle-chinese-idioms-prelim-frequency)


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