A cloze-type procedure can be used effectively to teach interpreters how to anticipate what the speaker will say, inferring communicative intention. The exercise uses a text from which words are deleted, not randomly as in the true cloze procedure, but in significant locations or contexts. The words or groups of words suppressed are progressively more significant as the student gains skill. The first elements removed from the text are syntactic connectors, beginning with prepositions and markers of subordination. This is useful in overcoming prepositional awkwardness. Verbs and verb phrases are the next most easily guessed elements, followed by attributive adjectives and adverbs, verbs and nouns, proper names, and numbers. Substituting concepts for missing figures and names is also a useful exercise for learning to infer the speaker's intention. Clozing need not only be done in a bilingual task, but can be effective when practiced in a single language. The exercises can be done orally or in written form. In addition, students can be taught to cloze automatically by listening selectively and glossing over non-essential lexemes. Progressively more difficult cloze versions of a text on Antarctica illustrate the possibilities of this approach. (MSE)