14 Activity: Auditory Clozure

Auditory “Clozure”

We’ve all done it. We are listening to someone talk and miss a word or two. We take the information that came before and came after the missed word and predict what it should have been. This is a type of auditory clozure (a version of the cloze procedure described by Taylor back in the early 1950’s).

​We can simulate this with this very simple sentence.

​Mary had a little _______. Its fleece was ________ as snow. Everywhere that _______ went, the lamb was sure to ______.

​Could you fill in the missing information? Why was that so easy? If you know the nursery rhyme, then it’s pretty simple to just fill in the missing information. But what if you didn’t know the rhyme? The first block would be tough, right? Mary could have a lot of different things. If you were able to guess that it was a lamb, then the next block would be pretty easy. You could get the third block because “Mary” has already been introduced. If you understood that it was a rhyme, then the last block may not be that hard.

Clozure with audio

Auditory clozure can be a bit more challenging, because it relies on some auditory memory. Listen to this sentence and see if you can figure out what words might be missing. Two words have been muted slightly (they are still audible, however).

How about if a word was completely missing?

Clozure in Noise

We tend to use this “clozure” skill a great deal when we are trying to hear in strong background noise. Listen to this sentence and see if you can get all of the words.

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