Definition of Gap Filling

Gap filling refers here to tests in which candidate is given a short passage in which some words or phrases have been deleted. The candidate's task is to restore the missing words. The deletions have been specially selected by the test writer to test chosen aspects of language such as grammar or reading comprehension.

Gap filling tasks are sometimes based on authentic texts and sometimes on specially written passages. In both cases the major difficulty is to make sure that each gap leads students to write the expected word. Ideally there should be one correct answer for each gap, but this is generally difficult to achieve. The answer key therefore likely to have more than one answer for some spaces. 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.

Gap Filling vs Cloze Test