C1 Advanced Parte 2: open cloze de gramática

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La parte 2 del C1 es un texto con ocho huecos y una sola palabra en cada uno, sin opciones. Es gramática pura: aquí no se examina el vocabulario, sino las palabras que sostienen la frase.

Qué palabra suele faltar

Tipo	Ejemplos	Cómo se detecta
Parte de una expresión fija	in spite of, on behalf of, by means of	El resto de la expresión ya está escrito.
Auxiliar	been, having, being, did	El verbo siguiente es participio o gerundio.
Conjunción o relativo	that, which, whose, whether	El hueco abre una oración subordinada.
Estructura enfática	It is … that, What … is	Hay un it is o un what al principio de la frase.
Comparativo o cuantificador	than, as, few, little, no	Hay una comparación o una cantidad cerca.
Conector de contraste	Unlike, Despite, However, Nevertheless	La frase cambia de dirección respecto a la anterior.

El método: lee el texto entero primero, y en cada hueco pregúntate qué función falta, no qué palabra. Si te falta un nexo, la respuesta es un nexo. Nunca escribas dos palabras.

Ejercicio 1 · Open cloze

Escribe UNA sola palabra en cada hueco.

The art of doing nothing

In (1) of the many productivity books published every year, remarkably few of them deal with rest. Doing nothing has (2) treated as the opposite of achievement for so long that most of us feel vaguely guilty the moment we stop moving.

Yet there is growing evidence (3) the brain does some of its best work when it appears to be idle. It is (4) these unstructured moments, rather than at the desk, (5) unexpected connections tend to surface.

The Dutch have a word for this, niksen, which refers to sitting without any purpose at all. (6) meditation, it has no technique and no goal. You are not supposed to be doing it (7) . Perhaps that is (8) so many of us find it impossible.

(1)spite. La expresión es in spite of, equivalente a despite. Es de las fijas que más caen; fíjate en que ya están escritos el in y el of.
(2)been. Es un present perfect pasivo: has been treated. El participio treated obliga a que falte been.
(3)that. Introduce la subordinada que completa a evidence. Aquí which no vale, porque no sustituye a ningún sustantivo anterior.
(4)during (o in). Es una frase enfática con It is… that, y lo que se enfatiza es un complemento de tiempo, así que hace falta una preposición.
(5)that. Es la segunda mitad de la estructura enfática It is… that. Sin ese that la frase se queda sin sujeto.
(6)Unlike. Se contrapone con la meditación: sin técnica y sin objetivo. Despite no funciona porque no hay contraste de obstáculo, sino de comparación.
(7)well. Detrás de doing it falta el adverbio. La gracia de la frase es justo esa: no se puede hacer bien porque no hay forma correcta.
(8)why. That is why introduce la consecuencia. Con because la frase quedaría al revés: la causa iría delante.

Ejercicio 2 · Open cloze

Escribe UNA sola palabra en cada hueco.

The last shop on the road

For nearly forty years, the shop at the crossroads sold everything (1) newspapers to fence wire. It survived two supermarkets opening in the nearest town, largely (2) it was the only place within nine miles where you could buy milk after six.

What finally closed it was not competition (3) arithmetic. The owner, who had taken over from her father, calculated that she was working eleven hours a day (4) order to earn less than she would have done stacking shelves elsewhere. (5) she announced that she was retiring, several customers offered to help, but none of them offered to buy the business.

The building is now a house. On the wall, (6) the new owners have kept, there is still a faded metal sign advertising a brand of tea that stopped being made in 1978. Visitors assume it is decoration. (7) fact it is simply the sign that was always there, and taking it down would have cost more (8) leaving it up.

(1)from — from … to … marca los extremos de una gama.
(2)because — introduce la causa; largely because = en buena medida porque.
(3)but — not X but Y contrapone las dos ideas.
(4)in — in order to = para.
(5)When — la oración temporal encaja con el but posterior.
(6)which — relativo que se refiere a the wall.
(7)In — in fact = en realidad.
(8)than — comparativo obligado detrás de more.

Ejercicio 3 · Open cloze

Escribe UNA sola palabra en cada hueco.

Why nobody remembers the middle

Ask someone about a holiday and they will describe the first day and the last, (1) very little in between. Psychologists call this the serial position effect, and it turns (2) to be remarkably difficult to escape.

The pattern holds for lists of words, for concerts, for job interviews and, unfortunately, (3) meetings. It is not (4) the middle is forgotten entirely; it is that it becomes smooth, losing the edges that make an event easy to retrieve later.

Some organisations have tried to make (5) of this. Conference programmes now often place the least popular sessions in the middle of the day, on the assumption that (6) will be judged less harshly. Whether this is good practice (7) simply cynical is a matter of opinion, but it works: audiences rate the same talk more positively when it appears at either (8) of the programme.

(1)and — une las dos partes de la descripción.
(2)out — turn out to be = resultar ser.
(3)for — la lista sigue con la misma preposición que for lists.
(4)that — it is not that …; it is that … es la estructura del contraste.
(5)use — make use of = aprovechar.
(6)they — sujeto que retoma the least popular sessions.
(7)or — whether X or Y.
(8)end — at either end = en cualquiera de los dos extremos.

Preguntas frecuentes

¿Puedo escribir dos palabras?

No. Solo una. Si has puesto dos, está mal aunque la frase funcione.

¿Vale una contracción?

Sí, cuenta como una palabra, pero en registro escrito formal conviene evitarla.

¿Cuál es la diferencia con la parte 1?

La parte 1 es vocabulario y te da opciones. La parte 2 es gramática y no te da nada.