I often hear people describing 'gap-fills' as practice tasks. They seem to be common suggestions for Controlled Practice. I see a lot of value in the use of different variations of gap-fill exercises for things like: drawing attention to patterns, checking understanding, discovery learning (if designed properly), etc. But I don't see them as being practice.
1) Before the Olympics I __________ (visit) China three times.
In this task the learner needs to do only one thing (change the verb tense), and write only two words ('had visited'). As a diagnostic test or as a checking task to see if Ss recognise which form is appropriate, it might be useful. Can we really call that practice though?
- They don't need to interact or communicate in any way.
- There is pretty much no focus on meaning.
- They don't need to produce a whole sentence.
- They don't even need to produce a whole clause.
Shouldn't practice require more production than this? A whole clause, at least, surely.
What's everyone else think?
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Hi Heath
I pretty much agree with you. That term 'practice'is very much misused in our profession I think. The question I often ask myself when tempted to use it is, 'Practice what?'
It's important as teachers that we know what our learners are practicing when they do activities like the one you suggest otherwise we are just 'doing' things and filling time. As you say there are good reasons for using those kinds of activties and understanding those reasons will help us develop meaningful lessons for our students that have direction and achieve real goals.
Best
Nik Peachey | Learning Technology Consultant, Writer, Trainer
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Hello, Heath and Nik, and everybody,
When I saw this forum topic, I stopped looking at any other topic.
I hope my contribution be helpful.
Communication has two tilts: grammar and vocab on one hand, and practice on the other hand.
Thus, I'd say exercises of filling out the blanks is so useful. First, because whatever you do, whatever the student does, is one step forward.
With these kinds of exercises the students can interiorize the pattern, if well conducted. You say and ask your kids to say sentences with this pattern. Fancy ones, fun ones.
Then tell them a short speech, somehow acting out, attention catchy, and utilize the pattern, emphasizing your voice whenever you say a sample of the pattern.
I will say nothing else, so as to give you a general view of the thing.
Heath, I hope this might raise any clue for your class-periods. I appreciate your starting this forum topic.
Nik, I plainly agree with you.
Thanks for both of you for having dealt about this interesting topic.
More often than not do many teachers in Spain not go beyond the mere filling in the blanks.
Fernando Díez
Granada (Spain)
Gap-fill is a kind of exercise; it is not a task. Gap-fill fills time allotted to teachers. T gives this kind of exercise which is in no way productive either in terms of communication or even structures.Even cloze exercise falls short of expectation so far as learning is concerned.Yes,Heath, Ss do not learn even phrase or clauses, let alone a sentence or discourse. Yet it is popular because of grammar-translation method.PPP model, too makes it popular.
So again,Communicative method urges Ts to give tasks and activities which are meningful and demand Ss to speak and pair work where all learners are involved in terms of language production. But Ts should be supplied with enogh materials and facilities of xerox et al.
I do like gap-fills for certain types of language focus, for checking understanding, or as a diagnostic test.
I definitely think they're very useful for highlighting patterns in the language, like collocations, for example. They can make good discovery tasks when you want to introduce a particular aspect of language in a learner-centred way.
I don't mean to rule them out... just doubtful of their use as practice, whether 'controlled' or not.
Yes, I agree with you, Heath. Ss discover rules. In terms of collocations the gap-fill isa reinforcement. But learner-centred way here is a bit out of their arena as Ts are in control of this activity and answers have got to be fixed.
Hence, practice is good, again speaking for a balance between different approaches. What do you say?
Couldn't agree more, Heath.
Gap-fill tasks, like all types of indirect formats, do not reflect real-world tasks. They are giveaways for test-wise Ss!
I limit them in the papers and tests I give my Ss and I tend to prefer direct formats, esp. open-ended responses to questions, summarising and essays, which assess productive and receptive skills alongside. It also assesses how they understand instructions.
When I use gap-fill exercises I don't offer my Ss any option, eg after a series of lessons on recruitment:
Fill each of the numbered blanks with a suitable word / phrase.
1. Thanks to this (1)…………………….…………………, you can see the structure of the company and the relationships between different jobs.
2. In the (2) ………………………. Department, we find out what customers want, set the prices and organise promotion campaigns.
3. Many firms are still happy to (3) ……………………….. their personnel themselves, but some companies find this too time-consuming and prefer to use the services of (4) ………………………, especially for senior positions.
So far it has proved a bit tricky for some of my Ss.
Heath, what do you think of cloze testing? There is a great deal of controversy about them.
To Anupkumarr:
The situation: The Ss have just listened to a dialogue between a business person, who after getting a recent promotion caused a big problem for the company, and a friend of his. The dialogue including the following expressions: by the time; down on your luck; going forward with (their plans); come up against difficulties; playing at (my job).
The aim: To raise Ss awareness of several expressions and phrasal verbs.
The task: The following gap-fill. Ss do the gap-fill alone first; then check in pairs; then they get the audio script of the dialogue and check their answers by finding the sentences in the dialogue.
My belief is that by doing the gap-fill the students' attention is drawn to these expressions and phrasal verbs. I wouldn't necessarily teach them anything. They do the listening practice, then they do the gap-fill alone, in pairs, and they check the answers with the original script. They get the meaning through the listening, they see the language in context, and then they 'discover' the patterns and the form by completing the task.
You do feel this example is learner-centred, right?
To Claire C:
I'm afraid I haven't been much involved in any real testing over the last several years. The only testing I do is of the informal 'paying attention to the Ss' kind, so I'm not really sure. Not only that, but I had always been under the impression that 'cloze' represented choosing gaps randomly (like counting off every 7th word) as opposed to the teacher choosing it. I've even told a lot of new teachers that's what it meant - oops!
I guess cloze is a strange fine line between objective testing and subjective testing. I'm skeptical of the value of objective testing because it always seems to be about knowledge of rather than ability to recognise/use, and subjective testing is, well, subjective... so is cloze a combination of the good, or the bad, points of each?
(I'm not being much help am I? I really don't know).
Cloze testing consists in deleting every nth word in a passage, i.e. every 7th or every 10th, it's up to the T.
There are also modified cloze tests where it is the T who chooses which words to delete, e.g. articles, verbs, prepositions or anything else, the choice being not necessarily based on parts of speech.
The Ls have to use the context, inc. the word(s) before and after to fill in the missing words.
The validity of this kind of test to assess reading comprehension is controversial, more than multiple-choice questions. In terms of language measure, it may be reliable because the individual items are interrelated.
When devising a cloze test, we expect the Ls will need certain strategies, e.g. process the material just within a given clause / across clauses within the same sentence / across sentences within the text, or bring in extra-textual material in order to respond.
For instance, I tell my Ss to read the passage once without trying to fill in the gaps, just to grasp the overall meaning. Then I tell them to read and to pay attention to the context, to the types of words they need, i.e. a verb, a noun, ...( parts of speech) and I also draw their attention to the tenses being used in the passage.
In most cases though, they will not use these strategies and will only focus on the blank and write a word randomly. I have noticed that the way they handle the task depends on their level and on their learning styles; the cloze test seems to fit analytical Ss only, while the others get rid of the task very quickly without paying much attention.
The same happens with MC: analytical Ss will try to find the information in the text, while others will just select a response by guessing or by eliminating unlikely options.
Cloze testing seems interesting to me in that it assesses the Ss' ability to find a meaningful word to fill in each blank, but it does by no way measure their productive skills. I tend to use it in formative tests only.
Gap fills can at best be used for the purpose of initial assessment to gauge where the student stands with respect to the English Language.
One area where gap fills can really be effective is to understand the extent to which students have understood idiomatic phrases, phrasal verbs and one word substitutes. Here again it is very important that no options are given to the student, by way of multiple choice.
Just to cite an example, All people need to save money for a rainy day
A person who loves helping other human beings is called an altruist
You are purely wasting your time by talking to Jack. It is just like casting pearls before a swine
Cloze Tests can be effective if the gap fills are not supported with options. Cloze Tests are very challenging since you need to understand the gist of the passage to get the gap fills right.
I side with you to some extent, but as a teacher of low-level students, I dare to say that it might be useful! There is one more interpretation of this task: you can avoid using that verb given in the brackets and give students a chance to fill in tha gaps up to their own intuition! It helps! And you'll also have fun!