4.1 Part 4 Factual Text 3-Option Grammar Cloze

The A2 Flyers Reading and Writing paper lasts 40 minutes. It has 7 parts, 44 questions and 48 marks, and children can earn a maximum of five shields. Correct spelling is required on every part. Pictures support the tasks. Any word that is not on the Pre A1 Starters, A1 Movers or A2 Flyers lists is glossed and never tested.

Part 4 is the first long grammar task after the vocabulary and story work of Parts 1–3. It has 10 questions and 10 marks. The Handbook for Teachers (2024) calls it a multiple-choice cloze: children read a gapped factual text, choose the correct word from three options, and copy that word into the gap. The 2026 format page says the same thing more briefly: reading and understanding a factual text, copying words, and simple grammar.

This part has a grammatical focus. That is the official difference from Part 3. Part 3 is a short narrative with a word box of nouns, adjectives and verbs, plus a title. Part 4 is not a story. It is a short information text — seasons, animals, places, how something works — with three printed options under or beside each gap. The options are given. Children must not invent a fourth word.

What “factual” looks like on the page

A Flyers Part 4 text teaches the reader something. The Handbook sample is about the seasons. Classroom texts in the same family include honeybees, penguins, volcanoes, the moon, pyramids, or how a bicycle works. The child is not following a character through a problem. The child is completing information so that the facts still make sense.

Because the text is factual, the grammar often holds time, place, quantity and cause:

• when summer begins, until it gets dark, in the afternoon
• each season, many countries, the biggest penguin
• because it is too cold, so the days are short, than a small child

Those small words are easy to skip when a child hunts only for “the interesting noun”. Part 4 marks live in the small words.

A method that uses the three options

The Handbook is blunt: the options are given, so it is not necessary to think of a word to fit the space. A child who stares at a gap and invents during when the three options are in / on / at has left the task. Inventing a fourth word never scores, even if the invented word is on the Flyers list and would be grammatical in another sentence.

Use this sequence every time:

1. Read the title and the example. Copy the style of the example: one word, copied clearly.
2. Read the whole text once without stopping at every gap. Get the topic: animals, weather, a place, a process.
3. Return to gap 1. Look only at the three options.
4. Decide the kind of word the sentence needs: verb form, preposition, conjunction, determiner, adjective, adverb.
5. Try each of the three words in the sentence. Two will sound wrong, clash with a nearby word, or break the fact.
6. Copy the chosen word exactly, including capital letters only if the option is printed that way.
7. Re-read the completed sentence. Then move on.

As with Part 3, children should practise forming and choosing the correct type of word to fit a sentence. If the gap sits after has, a base verb is unlikely. If the gap sits between two full clauses, a conjunction is likely. If the gap sits before the afternoon, the preposition is almost certainly in, not on or at.

Grammar the gaps actually test

Part 4 is not a free “any grammar” quiz. It stays inside the Starters, Movers and Flyers structure lists. Typical gap families are:

Verb forms, especially past forms

The Handbook tells teachers to make sure candidates know past forms of regular and irregular verbs on the Flyers vocabulary list. Factual texts often move through a process or a year, so tense is not decoration. It is the fact.

• Regular: live → lived, start → started, visit → visited, use → used, arrive → arrived.
• Irregular: go → went, come → came, make → made, take → took, see → saw, eat → ate, grow → grew, begin → began, find → found, give → gave, have → had, do → did, get → got, become → became.

A gap after yesterday, last year, in 1969, or a finished process usually wants a past form. A gap after usually, every year, or a scientific habit usually wants present simple. Do not choose going because the sentence “feels active”. Choose the form that matches the time of the fact.

Prepositions and time/place phrases

Flyers prepositions are small and heavily tested: in June, in the afternoon, on Monday, at night, at 4 o’clock, from flower to flower, for three months, until 10 o’clock. In / on / at is a classic three-option set. The noun after the gap decides the preposition, not the child’s first language.

Conjunctions and clause links

Flyers-new links include so, because, if (zero conditional), before / after, and when. A factual text may say the days are short because it gets dark at 4 o’clock, or plants grow when the weather gets warmer. Then and than look alike and are a high-risk pair: than follows a comparative (bigger than); then sequences a fact (Then they take the nectar home).

Determiners, comparatives and quantity

Each / every / this, many / much / some, the / a / an, and comparatives such as bigger than, the biggest, colder, shorter appear because factual writing compares and counts. If the text has already named four seasons, each season is about three months long is more likely than this season.

Do not treat these as four separate mini-tests. One sentence can need a past verb and a preposition in the next gap. That is why the whole-text read comes first.

Worked factual text (original teaching item)

The cloze below is a classroom model, not a copied sample paper. Read it as a child should: title, example, whole text, then each gap with only three options.

Penguins

Penguins are birds, but they cannot fly. They use their wings (1) _____ swim. Most penguins live (2) _____ the south of our planet. Emperor penguins are (3) _____ biggest penguins. They can be taller (4) _____ a small child. In winter the weather (5) _____ very cold and the sea is frozen. The father penguin looks after the egg (6) _____ the mother walks a long way to the sea. (7) _____ she comes back, she feeds the baby. Penguins (8) _____ fish. They often hunt together (9) _____ groups. Last winter scientists (10) _____ a new group of penguins on the ice.

Teaching options (one set per gap):

Gap 10 is the Handbook point about past forms. found is the only past form in that set. find is a present habit; finding is not the finite past. The child must read the time of this sentence, not “penguins = present tense always”. A child who has just finished a bees text must not carry honey into this one either: penguins eat fish, and invented topic-words are not among the three options.

Notice what is not in the options. A keen child may think of across the south or towards the sea. Those words are irrelevant. The mark is one of the three printed words, copied correctly.

Regular versus irregular in one factual paragraph

Train both lists on the same topic so children do not freeze when the options mix them.

• Regular: The ice melted. Scientists visited the island. They started work at six o’clock.
• Irregular: They went by boat. They saw the chicks. They took photos. They made a map. They came home in December.

A three-option set such as go / went / gone is a Flyers-classic trap. After Last year they, the answer is went. Gone needs have/has. Go is present or infinitive. Copy went, not a “near” form.

Copying, spelling and the rest of the paper

Part 4 still requires correct spelling. Choosing because in your head and writing becos loses the mark. Choosing until and writing untill loses the mark. Copy from the option, letter by letter. It is often better not to use joined-up writing. If a correction is needed, make it neatly; do not write one word on top of another.

Write only the one word needed. A long extra phrase (“in the south of the planet”) creates more chances to misspell and does not earn extra marks. The line is a cloze line, not a sentence-writing line.

British and American English are both accepted in Young Learners, but the word you copy must still be the printed option. Do not “translate” autumn into another word if autumn is the option on the page.

Time inside the 40 minutes

Part 4 is 10 marks of 48. After Parts 1–3 (about 16–18 minutes in a practical classroom split), about 22 minutes remain for Parts 4–7 plus a short check. A careful child can finish Part 4 in about 8–9 minutes: one full read, ten choices, one copy-check. Parts 5–7 still remain, including a 7-mark story-comprehension task and a 5-mark picture story. If Part 4 eats 15 minutes because the child is inventing extra words, later parts suffer.

Traps that lose Part 4 marks

• Inventing a fourth word because it “sounds more scientific”.
• Choosing the first option that is a real English word without trying the other two.
• Matching a keyword in the text (cold, winter) to a keyword in an option without reading the grammar of the gap.
• Mixing than / then / that, in / on / at, when / because / so.
• Using a present form when the sentence is a finished past fact, or a past form when the sentence is a habit.
• Carrying the topic of the previous classroom text into this one.
• Spending so long here that Part 7, worth 5 marks, is unattempted.

Lock the rule: three options, copy one word, grammar plus the fact. Then Part 5 can ask for a different skill: paraphrase of a story.