Tools - Gapfill generator

1. Printable / saveable gapfill exercise generator for teachers
2. Interactive gapfill tester for students (see 'Making an instant exercise')

Please note - there is now a new improved more printer-friendly version here.

For teachers

With this generator you can make printable gapfill exercises with a variety of ways of showing the gapped words, or not showing them at all (for example for a listening).

You can choose yourself which words to gap, doing it manually. This will be considerably quicker if you use my Quick Gapmaker. There's a link to it in 3. Make the gaps ...

Or for an instant exercise, you can use the automatic gap maker. This makes random gaps or takes away selected groups of words, for example: articles. The buttons for the interactive exercise will not appear in the printed worksheet.

Probably the best way to see how it works is to play around with the examples and all the options for a few minutes.

For students

Any piece of text can instantly become an interactive gapfill exercise, using the automatic gap maker. Just copy and paste the text into the box, use the automatic gap maker, select the type and press Generate.

For interactive exercises you can use the following options: Show words, No show and Anagrams. Or you can choose one of the other options and print it out. Click and Drop - In the Show words option, you can click on the words in the box and then on a suitable gap.

How to use - where you see ? mouse over for more details.

1. Enter the title and instructions (optional): ? Position: Centred Left

2. Enter a text or a list of questions ? then add gaps ?

Example: Select 1 Weddings - raw 2 Weddings - gapped 3 Gerund or infinitive? - Alternates 4 Word transformation 5 Word transformation 2 6 Divide 1 - Show words 7 Divide 2 - Show words 8 Panto - Phrases 9 Text for gapmaking

3. Make the gaps, manually or automatically Show details

1. To make gaps manually, surround the words to be gapped with square brackets
- bla bla bla [gapword] bla bla bla

To speed this up you can use my Quick Gap Maker - copy your text and take it there, then bring it back here (there's a link there).

2. To make gaps automatically - Enter a text and then you have a choice:

2a. Make random gaps - Select: Qty ? Min Length ? and

2b. Use the preselector - Enter any words you would like gapped, separated by a comma (no space) into the box below. Or use the selector to automatically enter sets: articles, prepositions etc, to be gapped. Then click on 'Go'

For an exercise on articles, you can use the preselector to remove existing articles, and the Quick Gapmaker to add zero articles.

Pre-select articles articles + some prepositions

Click here to restore the original text

4. Add required treatment to gapwords or text Show details

You can treat the missing words so they they appear differently in the exercise, but still show correctly in the answers.

Gap word treatment
Show base word	[have been walking\walk] only shows 'walk'
Show part of answer 1	[chair>s] will only show 'chair'
Show part of answer 2	[how to <get] will only show 'get'
Show part of answer 3	[have been <walk>ing] will only show 'walk'
Show more than the first letter	[st_ring] will show st...........
Text treatment
To make something Bold	Surround it with these opening and closing tags<b>word</b>
To make something Italic	Surround it with these opening and closing tags<i>word</i>
To Underline something	Surround it with these opening and closing tags<u>word</u>

5. Dividing a longer exercise into two or more. Show details

You probably don't want more than about 12-15 gapped words per exercise. You can divide longer texts or lists of questions into separate exercises: just leave a double blank line where you would like to split the exercise. Uncheck this box if you don't want the exercises numbered.

6. Fine tuning (optional) - reset to

Numbering: Questions (Paras) Gaps Both Neither ?

Box features: Middots ? Repeats Avoid Number Show all ? Lower case ?

Select: Gap width ? Line height ? font Arial Verdana Times Georgia Comic sans Trebuchet Lucida C Tahoma Courier ?

7. Select gap word option Show details Show words No show First letter Spaces Combo No vowels No consonants Anagrams In line and

Use the selector below to select what to do with the gap words:

Show words	Shows the missing words in a box at the top
No show	Doesn't show the words at all - suitable for listenings etc
First letter	Shows only the first letter of the word
Dashes	Replaces the letters with dashes
Combo	Shows the first letter plus dashes
No vowels	Removes all vowels (+ y)
No consonants	Removes all consonants (except y)
Anagrams	Shows an anagram after the gap
In line	Shows only the base word (see 4. treating gap words, above)

Your exercise will appear here

Made with an exercise generator at
Random Idea English
http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com

Answers

Printer friendly post

You can open the document in a new tab or window (IE) for printing. Click here. You can open a separate page with the answers by clicking here.

Or you can print as normal from the blog. The exercise will be on Page 2 and the answers on Page 3

Code