This post contains a series of video tutorials on creating Mix and Gap exercises in TaskMagic3.
1. Introduction to the Mix and Gap edit screen + the auto-generated exercises
Type or paste any text into the Mix and Gap edit screen, click "View Exercises" and you immediately have up to 16 automatically generated exercises based on reconstructing your original text:
2. Introduction to the non-auto-generated exercises in Mix and Gap
A quick run-through of the 5 gap-fill formats, the Find it! format and the reading comprehension format.
See this related blog post which gives examples of these formats, most of which are new in TaskMagic3.
3. Making a basic gap-fill exercise
How to make a basic gap-fill exercises (gapped text with a lists of the gapped words beneath) in Mix and Gap. This is the original Gap-fill exercise, with a few extra features in TaskMagic3.
See this related blog post which gives more details about this format and an example worksheet.
See this link to information about the Gap-fill exercise on the TaskMagic website.
4. Making a multi-choice gap-fill (Multi Gaps)
How to make a multi-choice gap-fill exercise in Mix and Gap. Each gap can have 2 to 4 possible answers.
See this related blog post which gives more details about this format and an example worksheet.
See this link to information about Multi Gaps on the TaskMagic website.
5. Making a Write Gaps gap-fill exercise
How to make a no-prompt, no-word-list gap-fill exercises where students must use the context to work out the missing word(s).
See this related blog post which gives more details about this format and an example worksheet.
See this link to information about Write Gaps on the TaskMagic website.
6. Making a Prompt Gaps gap-fill exercise
How to make a Prompt Gaps gap-fill exercise where every gap has a clue or prompt. Great for verb conjugation gap-fills, or word family gap-fills for higher levels.
See this related blog post which gives more details about this format and an example worksheet.
See this link to information about Prompt Gaps on the TaskMagic website.
7. Making a Long Gaps gap-fill exercise
How to make a gap-fill exercise where gaps can be up to 200 characters long. Ideal for longer texts where you can have a whole sentence or clause as a gap.
See this related blog post which gives more details about this format and an example worksheet.
See this link to information about Long Gaps on the TaskMagic website.
8. Making a Find it! exercise
Find it! allows you to make "Find the French for...." (or Spanish, German, Italian etc) exercises where students have to find text with a particular meaning. Excellent for presenting vocab in context as well as for providing extra practice.
See this post about exploiting texts to maximum effect using Find it!
See this post about using mini dual texts to present vocab.
See this link to information about Find it! on the TaskMagic website.
9. Making a multi-choice Comprehension exercise
How to make a multi-choice reading comprehension activity with 2 to 4 possible answers per question.
See this related blog post which gives more details about this format and an example worksheet.
See this link to information about Comprehension on the TaskMagic website.
10. Adding sound to Mix and Gap files
How to add a sound file to your Mix and Gap file, so that it provides aural support, dictation opportunities and lots of reinforcement of sound-spelling links. Can also be used by students to help them prepare for oral assessments.
11. An introduction to worksheet printing in Mix and Gap
This is just a brief introduction to the Mix and Gap worksheet printing screen. It compares the 6 worksheets that are automatically generated without extra input, with the 7 additional worksheets based on the non-auto-generated content mentioned in videos 2 to 9 above.
Also demonstrates the use of doPDF - http://www.dopdf.com - to "print" (ie.save) worksheets as pdf files.
This video does not demonstrate every worksheet, but see the many blog posts listed under Exploiting Texts as well as all of those listed under Mix and Gap for lots of examples of Mix and Gap worksheets.
12. Enabling / disabling specific exercises in Mix and Gap
How to disable specific exercises. For example, if you have a 400 word text, you're likely to want to disable those exercises that are based on rebuilding the text word by word or letter by letter and focus more on the sequencing and gap-filling exercises.
13. Creating individual exercise files in Mix and Gap
How to create individual exercise files, which, when opened, go directly to a specific exercise (rather than the front page) and, when closed, close the file completely.
For more information on the Mix and Gap component of TaskMagic3, go to http://www.mdlsoft.co.uk/mixandgap.htm
You can get a free 30-day trial of TaskMagic, which will allow you to make your own TaskMagic resources, from http://www.mdlsoft.co.uk/trialdownloads.htm (No registration is required - just download it, install it, and start using it!)
If you've previously had a trial of TaskMagic3 and would like to trial it again, that's now possible by arrangement. See the above link, and click on the email contact on that page to contact us to request an extra trial for your school.
:0)