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. The Cloze Passage section of the AP Spanish Language exam consists of two reading selections that contain numbered blanks indicating that words or phrases have been omitted. You are given four options for each blank, but only one is correct. The purpose of this exercise is to test your vocabulary and your knowledge of Spanish grammar.
To do well with the Cloze reading part of the AP, you need to be able to:
Demonstrate control of an ample range of Spanish vocabulary, including idiomatic expressions.
Determine the correct grammatical form of a word according to the context of the passage.
To understand the written Spanish language within the context of journalistic or literary texts, you need two things:
Your vocabulary must be within the range expected for a third-level student of Spanish as a second language. You can greatly increase your command of Spanish vocabulary and grammar by reading the different types of selections found in newspapers, magazines, or the Internet, or by reading literary passages from short stories or novels.
Your knowledge of Spanish grammar must be advanced enough to be able to discriminate past tense from present or future, to recognize the use of different modes of speaking (such as indicative and subjunctive), and to figure out the subject of a sentence.
Vocabulary and language mechanics are of the essence if you want to be successful in this part of the exam.
Your familiarity with Hispanic culture, as well as your own life experiences, will be of great help in achieving a good command of Spanish reading skills. Try to identify words that are cognates, that is, words that may look a bit different in another language but have the same meaning (such as león and lion, navegar and navigate, and so on). Recognizing cognates will facilitate your understanding of the selection as a whole, as well as provide you with some specific details.