GAP FILLING

PREMILA KATHLEEN GNANASELVAM

A/P KANAGARAJ
M20171000759
DEFINITION
• In language teaching, a gap-fill test is an exercise in
which words are removed from a text and replaced with spaces.
The learner has to fill each space with the missing word or
a suitable word.
WHY GAP FILLING TEST?
• We have now studied English for a long time and we have
covered the entire range of topics, from parts of speech,
vocabulary, tenses and subject-verb agreement to finites/non-
finites. We have dealt with the nuances of grammar. We have
seen how words from different parts of speech convert to
perform the functions of other parts of speech. We have looked
at sentences and their variations. We have seen how active and
passive voices behave in certain situations. In this High English
quiz, we put to the test our knowledge of English grammar by
conducting an exercise known as gap filling.
• A gap filling exercise is a great way to practise your English. This
exercise will leave a gap to be filled by a word or group of words
that fall into a particular category, and so test your knowledge
WHY GAP FILLING TEST?Cont..
STUDENT

ENTIRE RANGE OF TOPICS GRAMMAR

GAP FILLING TEST( A WORD /GROUP OF WORDS

UNDERSTANDING PASSAGES KNOWLEDGE OF GRAMMAR

RESULT
COMPREHEND TEXTS MASTERED GRAMMAR KNOWLEDGE
HOW TO CONSTRUCT?
• Gap-filling tasks are sometimes based on the authentic texts or specially written passages.

• Some words or phrases in the passages have been deleted for the students to restore the missing words
or fill in the blanks with correct answers.

• Sometimes, it can be more than two answers for some spaces.

• So, for reliability of marking, it is important to reduce the number of alternative answers to the minimum
and to ensure that there are no other possible answers which are not listed in the answer key.

• It is essential that the test is tried out on colleagues and then pretested.

• If many of the gaps are not easily restored, or if marking proves to be a problem, a banked gap-filling
task may be the answer (each of the missing words or phrases is included in a list which is presented on
the same page as the gap-filling text)

• Contractions such as "we'll" should be avoided.

• It is always important to tell students whether each gap is to be filled by one or by more than one word.
GAP FILLING PROCESS
STUDENT

GIVEN A SHORT PASSAGE WITH WORDS

OR PHRASES DELETED TO PRACTICE A
SPECIFIC LANGUAGE POINT

RESTORE THE MISSIING

WORDS/PHRASES
GAP FILLING-DO’S & DON’T’S
DO’S DON’TS
* Teach – * Use a or an to provide a
passage/grammar clue

*Omit only a relevant key *Place more than one

word answer for some spaces

*Use straight forward

sentences

*Check that learners can

infer the meaning even
without the deleted word
GAP FILLING INSTRUCTIONS
• Read the text carefully before and after the gap to help you choose the right word.

• The words are often in a box. Careful! Sometimes there are more words than gaps.

• If the words aren’t in a box, be careful with your spelling.

• Start with the words you know and tick them off so you know which ones you've used.

• If you don’t know an answer, write a word. You may be right!

• If you write a word in the wrong gap, then another word in the exercise may be wrong too.

• Check your answers carefully when you finish. Read the whole text to see what it sounds like
ADVANTAGES
• Little scope for the learner to guess the correct answer
• Useful for assessing recall
• Scoring can be perfectly reliable, rapid and economical
• Guessing will (or should) contribute less to test scores
• The technique is not restricted by the need for distractors
• Cheating is likely to be more difficult
DISADVANTAGES
• Often difficult to write questions that have only one correct
answer
• Sometimes the word(s) omitted make it difficult to understand
the meaning of the sentence
SAMPLES
GAP FILLING EXERCISE: For questions 1-10, complete the following article. Use only one word for each space. The exercise begins with an example (0).

A DNA fingerprint __of___ (0) every active criminal in Britain will be taken _________ (1) part of government plans ___________ (2) a

wide-ranging overhaul of the criminal justice system, the Prime Minister said yesterday. In his first public announcement

____________ (3) returning from holiday, Tony Blair promised to deliver a courts system fit for the 21st century. Addressing police officers

in Kent, in southern England, he accused the courts of being run for __________ (4) own convenience and promised to ensure that

victims, witnesses and police giving evidence would receive more respect. Mr Blair declared the justice system archaic, saying it

hindered police efforts to keep up ____________ (5)organised crime, and announced a 107 million package to expand the DNA

database. According to a government spokesman, the database should hold more than three million samples equivalent

_________ (6) almost the whole criminal class of the UK. 'I think we _______(7) effectively got a 19th century justice system in a 21st

century world,' the Prime Minister said. 'We have totally failed to keep ____________ (8) to date with the fact that we have got major

organised crime operating in a completely different way to 50 or 60 years ago,' he said. Mr Blair stressed that he was

________ (9) favour of so-called zero tolerance and wanted a law-abiding society based on courtesy _________ (10) others.
 SAMPLES
Read this letter from Ben to his friend Sheila. For each space, put a relative pronoun:

Whose - Where - when - who - which - that

Where it is possible to leave the empty space without a relative pronoun, write 0 (zero) in the box.
Where both which and that can be used, use that.

Dear Sheila

In your last letter, you asked me to tell you about all the things I did during the summer vacation.

We went to Vancouver (1) ___________ I have some old friends (2) _________ I haven't seen for about three years. My friend Tim, (3) __________ mother I wrote about in my last letter to you,
came with me and we had a great time. We flew into Vancouver on Monday 24th, (4) _________ was also my birthday.

The first thing we did was to visit the wonderful aquarium in the city center (5) _________ there are three killer whales and a whole crowds of seals, penguins and dolphins. We arrived in the late
afternoon (6) __________ all the animals are fed so it was wonderful to see the dolphins leaping out of the water to get the fish (7) __________ they love to eat so much.

The following day, (8) __________ was cloudy and rainy unfortunately, we went to a museum (9) _________ they have some dinosaur skeletons (10) __________ local people have found in the
area. The horrible weather never improved all day so we visited a superb seafood restaurant later in the afternoon and had an early dinner. The waiters, (11) _________ were all dressed in
traditional fishermen's clothes, were very friendly and told us about the history of the restaurant (12) ___________ name was The Jolly Whaler. The restaurant, (13) ___________ has been open
since 1888, was once visited by the American President J.F. Kennedy and his wife Jacky.

The skies were blue on Thursday and we spent some time out on the sea in a large boat (14) _________ we hired. I caught a big fish (15) __________ the captain said was the biggest he had seen
this year. I felt very proud! We left on Thursday evening after a mini vacation (16) ________ helped me to relax a lot and now I have returned to work.

The next time (17) __________ you write to me, you must tell me about YOUR last vacation.

Bye for now Sheila,

Ben.
Cloze Test

NIROSHA KARTHIGESAN
M20172001866
Cloze Test
 A cloze test involves a piece of text.

 It is intended to measure students’ ability to

decode interrupted or mutilated by making the
most acceptable substitutions from all the
contextual clues available.
Characteristic of Cloze Test
 It consists of words that are deleted from text after allowing a few sentences
of introduction.

 Deletion set is mechanically set, 5th and 8th.

 Varieties of Cloze Test
 Fixed-ratio method

 Variable-ratio method

 Modified fixed-ratio method

 Advantages of Cloze text
 Easy to construct and easy to score.

 A valid measure for reading comprehension

test.
 Disadvantage of Cloze Test
 Difficult to determine whether a certain word
is appropriate to the text or not, so that is takes
a long time to check.
C-Test
GAYATHRI JAYAPALAN
DEFINITION

• C-Tests were developed as a replacement for cloze tests in 1981

by Raatz and Klein-Braley from both theoretical and has the
same basic theoretical assumptions as the cloze test (Grotjahn &
Stemmer, 2002).
• The C-Test is a variation of the cloze test and the difference is
that in C- Test parts of words are omitted not the whole words.
Do’s
• the second half of every second word has been deleted,
beginning with the second word of the second sentence(the
rule of two” has been applied)
• a reading passage should have a familiar topic for a learner to
engage with a text
• must not be very difficult
• first and last sentences should remain without any deletion
• includes several authentic texts, usually between 4 and 6 with 20
to 25 gaps in each text.
• the exact answer should be given
• Numbers and proper names are usually left without any
changing
Don’t’s
• Don’t select random words to be deleted
• Don’t focus on one specific topic ( past tense, article)
• Don’t change it to a cloze test
Advantages
• a variety of texts are recommended.
• The correction of the task can be objectively scored as it is rare
to have more than one answer.
• The results are encouraging in terms of reliability and validity
Disadvantages
• The face validity is low because there are many blanks spaces.
• If the isolated words are difficult, the test takers concentrate their
mind in guessing the vocabulary instead of comprehending the
grading text.
Why C-Test
• Many more items can be included in much shorter texts, making
the test less time-consuming for the students than the cloze.
• Unlike the cloze test, scoring is easy and objective.
Sample of C-Test
ANSWERS