How Reading Fill in the Blanks works
You see a short text, up to 80 words, with a few gaps. Below it is a single word bank that serves every gap, and it holds more words than there are blanks. You drag a word into each gap. Each word can fill only one gap, and the extras stay behind.
This is the drag-and-drop task. Do not confuse it with Reading and Writing: Fill in the Blanks, which uses a longer text of up to 300 words and a separate dropdown list for each gap. The shared bank here changes the strategy: your choices affect each other, because placing a word in one gap removes it from the others.
What is scored
You get partial credit for each correctly filled blank. No deduction is listed for wrong placements, so fill every gap.
Because the bank is shared, one error can cause another. If you put the word that belongs in gap 3 into gap 1, gap 3 is now likely to be wrong as well. That knock-on effect is why the order in which you fill the gaps matters more here than in the dropdown task.
How to answer
- Read the whole text first. At 80 words, this takes seconds and tells you the topic and tone.
- Fill the certain gaps first. Every word you place confidently shrinks the bank and makes the harder gaps easier.
- Name the part of speech each remaining gap needs. Then look only at bank words of that type.
- Use the neighbors. Articles, prepositions and the verb that follows the gap will usually rule words in or out.
- Check the leftovers. Before moving on, look at the unused words and confirm that none of them fits better than what you placed.
Common mistakes
- Working strictly from left to right and using up a word early that belongs in a later gap.
- Choosing a word because it matches the topic when it is the wrong part of speech. Distractors are often on topic.
- Not noticing a versus an before the gap, which can decide between two nouns.
- Leaving the final check of unused words undone.
Sorting the word bank
A quick habit that helps: before placing anything, mentally sort the bank into groups. Say the bank holds decline, rapidly, evidence, suggest, rapid, indicate and researchers. You now know you have one adverb, one adjective, two clear nouns, two clear verbs, and decline, which can be either. When a gap follows the and precedes of, you only need to consider the nouns. Sorting turns seven options into two or three for most gaps.