Cloze technique (English)

[sendai]

All right, Noelia, ahora te toca a vos. Suerte!

Democracy works - only very slowly

The violent Hamas takeover of Gaza raises a troubling question: Did the experiment of using democracy to tame Islamists lead to unmitigated disaster?

A disaster is occurring 1_____ Palestine, to be sure. But 2_____ we rush to
abandon democracy, 3_____ should turn our attention 4_____ a more genteel
political 5_____ that has been occurring 6_____ Kuwait. The oil minister, a
7_____ of the ruling family, 8_____ provoked harsh parliamentary
criticism 9_____ he spoke admiringly of 10_____ of his predecessors in
11_____ post, a relative accused of 12_____ state coffers of untold
13_____. But while some have 14_____ to bring the minister 15_____, members of
Kuwait's Islamic Constitutional Movement have tried 16_____ defuse the crisis
by 17____ an apology from the 18_____. They are motivated not 19_____
by agreeable sentiments but 20_____ by the fact that 21_____ currently hold a
position 22_____ a cabinet that they 23_____ wish to see collapse.

[Noelia]

A ver...

1) in
2) as
3) we
4) to
5) disaster
6) in
7) member
8) has
9) when
10) some
11) a
12) several
13) allocation
14) enough
15) before (? not sure, this is probably a phrasal verb meaning they have proofs to take him to prison, right?)
16) to
17) offering
18) government
19) only
20) also
21) they
22) at
23) don't ( I wrote "certainly" but that would go against the meaning of the sentence, I'm not sure if "don't" is considered one word though)

I think I made up a story here LOL

[sendai]

Good job. This was pretty hard, actually, but I figured you were up to the challenge. A few comments:

2. "as we rush to abandon democracy" grammatically correct and it makes sense, but it has the opposite meaning the word used in the article, which as "before". Still, your answer isn't wrong.

10. "___ of his predecessors", fine, except that the next part of the sentence says "a relative accused of...", so it can't be more than one person. I think "one" fits better.

12. "a relative accused of ____ state coffers" several options here: robbing, emptying, pilfering, etc.

13. "state coffers of untold ____" options: wealth, thousands, millions, billions

15. "to bring the minister down" right, it's a phrasal verb.

22. "hold a position ___ a cabinet" Americans would say "in". Maybe in England "at" sounds okay.

[Noelia]

Ah no era tan facil como parecia.. este ejercicio me gusta, es dificil pero muy bueno para practicar vocabulario y sobretodo reading comprehention....

Hay que prestar mucha atencion a las oraciones y al texto en general antes de decidir que palabra vamos a usar!

[sendai]

El que te di a vos le hubiera costado a muchos hablantes nativos, creo. But I figured you were up to the challenge, and I was right.

Maybe you could make a web page that could automate this exercise. Remove every fifth word, skipping capitalized proper nouns. Of course, you still need a native speaker to check the answers.

[Noelia]

me equivoqué y dejé el test aca, pero mejor en otro thread así no
mezclamos!