How To Do The Gapped Text Activity

HOW TO DO THE GAPPED TEXT ACTIVITY
The 'gapped text' activity is part of the Reading and Use of English paper of the Cambridge
CPE. You get a long text with six paragraphs removed (leaving 6 gaps, hence the name of
the task). Your job is to put the paragraphs back into the right place. It's quite hard, and
Cambridge makes it harder by including an extra paragraph that doesn't fit into any of the
spaces.

When you do this part of the exam bear the following in mind:

1. A good key fits only one lock
The 'key' to this task is to know that each gap in the text can only be filled by one of the
paragraphs. Read any good text and it'll be so full of clues about the structure that you could
run it through a shredder and - if you had enough time - recreate it.
HOW TO START
Read the whole text. Read all the paragraphs.
Then pay special attention to the sentences before and after the gap - a lot of the most
important information will be there. You don't have to start with the first gap - always start
with the one you think is going to be easiest and leave the hardest ones till later. The first
answer you choose will be a 1 in 7 chance, but the last one is 1 in 2.
But be careful! Sometimes there won't be a clue in the sentence immediately before or after
the gap. You really do need to read the whole text to get its meaning - sometimes the 'clue'
is the entire paragraph.

2. Get a clue
Detectives use clues to fill in gaps. 'Lord Haversham was killed by a left-handed man at
1:25 in the morning... the only person alone at that time was Charles the butler.' You
can develop similar skills by looking for clues in your Cambridge exam.
What sort of clues are in a text?
 Names and pronouns (Jack... he... this...)
 Chronology (Then... Finally...)
 Quotation marks ("I couldn't believe it.")
 Contrast words (However, but)
 Verb tenses (had gone... will have finished)
 Cause and effect (Therefore... as a result...)
 Repetition (in other words...)
In the next section we'll look at those things in more detail.

3. Fill in those gaps
Let's start filling in gaps by looking for clues!
NAMES AND PRONOUNS 1
Once upon a time there was a boy named Jack. [1] __________________________.
Then he died.
Choose one of these sentences to go in gap [1]:
A - He ate all the chocolate in London.
B - Their house was on a hill.
Okay so that's pretty easy, right? Jack links to 'he', not 'their'. Also, there's a link
between eating all the chocolate in London and then dying, so the story has a logical
flow.
NAMES AND PRONOUNS 2
The documentary featured interviews with many of the top scientists in the field.
[2] __________________________. But the story was far from funny, and
many viewers wrote to the BBC to complain about its depressing ending.
A - It was watched by 8 million people.
B - One was Simon Baron-Cohen, brother of the famous comedian.
This one is harder. Both answers are attractive - there are lots of possible links. The
pronouns help, but are not the complete story. In answer A, 'it' would refer to 'the
documentary' while in B, 'one' refers to 'top scientists'. And 8 million people seems to
link to the word 'viewers'. But reading the whole text, only answer B makes sense.
There's a strong logical link between 'comedian' and 'not funny' and that is revealed by
the word 'but'. Which brings us to...
CONTRASTING PHRASES
We've seen the power of 'but'. Here's another example:
The website was not immediately popular. [3] __________________________.
A - However, in 2014 visitor numbers surged and it briefly became the number 1 site in
its category.
B - In 2014 visitor numbers surged and it briefly became the number 1 site in its
category.
Which do you think creates a better flow to the story? The sentence before [3] is
'negative' so I expect a contrast word or phrase to introduce a 'positive' sentence. Thus,
A.

TIME PHRASES
In the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, actors and actresses were tied to restrictive
contracts that put their interests below the interests of the movie studios.
[4] __________________________.
A - These days, however, they are free to choose projects that interest them.
B - More movies are now made in India than in Los Angeles.
Pronouns help us here - 'they' and 'them' in answer A refer to 'actors and actresses'. And
we also have help from the time phrase. 'The golden age' is a period of time (if that
wasn't clear there's also the past tense 'were tied'), which contrasts (using the contrast
phrase 'however') the phrase 'these days'.
Sentence B might be true, but is irrelevant to the sentence before the gap.

QUOTATION MARKS
A gap or two might be in speech marks ("") - that makes it pretty easy to find the
answer (in my opinion, anyway!). Ask yourself: which of the sentences sounds like it
was voiced by a real person? If there is a text written in a neutral register and one of the
answers has the pronoun 'I' then that has to go inside the quotation marks.
But there was more to his performance than scoring the winning goal. He also
motivated his younger teammates, driving them forward, boosting their morale when
needed. '[5]_____________________.'
A - He had become a true leader of men.
B - I felt like I was on top of the world, like that woman in that movie.
Answer: B.
AND THE OTHERS?
There are more tips that I could give you about this section, but the best advice is for
you to practice this exercise and learn how the answers are chosen. Don't just do the
activity and forget about it - think about why those sentences were taken out. What does
Cambridge want to test you on?
You and a friend could take a text each, remove some sentences, and test each other.
Once you've put the sentences back, you could discuss whether those were the same
sentences that Cambridge would remove from the text.

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