The TaskMagic Blog

In the most recent TaskMagic3 update, 5 new exercise formats have been added to the Mix & Gap component of TaskMagic, which now has a total of 23 interactive exercise formats available based on the same source text.

1. Multi Gaps

Multi Gaps: a multiple choice gap-fill exercise with up to 60 gaps. Each gap can have 2, 3 or 4 possible answers, and more than one answer can be marked as correct.

2. Write Gaps

Write Gaps: a written answer gap-fill exercise, with no clues, prompts or word lists, making it more challenging than other gap-fill formats. You can also specify up to 3 additional correct answers for each gap, for those situations where more than one correct answer would be acceptable.

3. Prompt Gaps

Prompt Gaps: a written answer gap-fill exercise with a prompt for each gap. There are all sorts of possibilities for prompts, e.g. a verb in the infinitive requiring conjugation; a translation; a verb requiring a noun or vice versa, etc. You can also specify up to 3 additional correct answers for each gap, for those situations where more than one correct answer would be acceptable.

4. Long Gaps

Long Gaps: a gap-fill exercise designed for longer gaps which can be entire sentences or clauses.This exercise is similar in a way to other sequencing exercises available in Mix & Gap (e.g. Tower Block, 1 in 3, Tiles), but the big difference is that the teacher specifies where the text is broken up - it isn't done automatically. This means that entire sentences can be used as gaps, and the focus is much more on meaning than on the mechanical sequencing of items based on sentence level grammar. The texts to be re-inserted into the text (i.e. the gaps) are listed below the text.

5. Comprehension

Comprehension: you can now create a multiple choice reading comprehension activity based on your Mix & Gap text. A comprehension activity can have up to 60 questions, each with 2, 3 or 4 multiple choice answers. This means that you can use it for True / False, True / False / Not mentioned, as well as for normal multiple choice questions.

With the 4 new gap-fill formats listed above, there are now 5 different gap-fill formats in TaskMagic3 Mix & Gap, including the original Gap-Fill exercise:

And a total of 7 non-automatically generated exercise fomats, including Find it! (as well as the 16 automatically generated formats):

The 5 new Mix & Gap formats also have their own worksheets. See the examples below.

1. Multi Gaps

2. Write Gaps

3. Prompt Gaps

4. Long Gaps

5. Comprehension

For details of all 23 formats available in the Mix & Gap component of TaskMagic3, visit the Mix & Gap page of the TaskMagic website.

If you don't already have TaskMagic3, you can download a 30-day trial from http://www.mdlsoft.co.uk/trialdownloads.htm

If you already have TaskMagic3, you can update by going to our updates page at http://www.mdlsoft.co.uk/TMUpdate.htm

Visit the TaskMagic website for details of the other 7 components of TaskMagic and for lots more information about TaskMagic: http://www.mdlsoft.co.uk

SEE THESE EXTENSIVE VIDEO TUTORIALS on all aspects of creating your own resources in Mix and Gap to exploit all sorts of texts. These include a separate video for each of the non-automatically-generated exercises featured on this post.

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