Tools - Gapfill Printable Exercise Generator (Version 2)

Currently under testing

New and improved bells and whistles version

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

New! Doc-friendly option - You can now make a more doc-friendly worksheet for copying and pasting into Word etc. This has a very basic layout and will be easier to alter in your word processor.

New! Quick Gapmaker - You can now make gaps quickly by simply clicking on the appropriate words in the Gapmaker.

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 which words to gap, doing it manually. This will be even quicker if you use the integrated Quick Gapmaker (see below)

Or for an instant exercise, you can use either the Random gap maker or the Auto gap maker. This takes away selected groups of words, for example: articles.

You can also print a teacher copy with answers.

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

For students - Making an instant exercise

Any piece of text can instantly become an interactive gapfill exercise. Just copy and paste the text into the box, click on 'Quick Random Gaps' or use the automatic gap maker to remove prepositions etc, select a suitable 'Gap word option' and 'Interactive Web page'

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 - mouse over the ? signs and for more details.

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

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

Example: Select 1 List of Qs - ungapped 2 List of Qs - gapped 3 Text - ungapped 4 Text - gapped 5 Transformation - verb forms 1 6 Transformation - verb forms 2 7 Split 1 - Countable? 8 Split 2 - How to etc 9 Text 2 ungapped

3. Making gaps - Manual: Show , Random: Show , Auto: Show , Gapmaker: Show

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

To speed this up you can use the Gapmaker. Click on 'Gapmaker Show'

Make random gaps - Enter a text , then either make

or select: Qty ? Min Length ? and

Make auto gaps - Enter a text - 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 'Make gaps'

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

Preselect a,an,the a,an,some at,in,on by,with to,from who,which,that where,when

Gapmaker Show instructions for use

When you open this it will have transferred the text from the box above and the first button will have been selected. This makes standard one word gaps.

When you click on a word in the bottom box, square brackets will be added to the appropriate word in the top box. You can 'ungap' any word by clicking on it again. If you add a new text to the top box, click on 'Transfer' to transfer it from the box.

To include two or more words in one gap, use the first button to gap the first word as usual. Then use the second button to add the next word(s)

For other sorts of gaps select an appropriate action button. (Mouse over the buttons to see what they do).

• [x]
• [y]x]
• []x
• [(-)]x
• [z]x
• [x/z]
•  B 
•  I 
•  U 

4. Optional extras Show options

- Treat gapwords for transformations etc Show details

You can treat the gapped words so they they appear differently in the top box, but still show correctly in the answers. This is good for transformation exercises - look at the examples to see what happens.

Gap word treatment
Show base word	[taking\walk] only shows 'take'
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 <work>ing] will only show 'work'
Show more than the first letter	[st_ring] will show st...........

- Add text treatment (bold, italic, underline) Show details

This should be done after you have made the gaps.

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>

Note - This can be done more quickly with the Gapmaker

- Divide 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.

5. Fine tuning (numbering, font, word box options, etc) Show options -

- Numbering Question / Para Gap Both Neither Dialogue ? - Randomised ?

- Word Box: Middots ? Repeats Avoid Number Show all ? Lower case ? Order abc random as is ?

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

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

Use the selector above 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)

7. Choose page type Interactive Exercise Web style page for printing Web style page + answers Doc-friendly page for printing Doc-friendly page + answers and

8. Open the exercise in a new tab or window (IE)

Your exercise will appear here

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