The repeated word that looked like the answer: Part 6 gapped text
Elena, 15, is three months from sitting B2 First for Schools. Her teacher sets Part 6 of Reading and Use of English: a text of about 500 words with six sentences removed and seven options, one of which fits nowhere. Elena scores 2/6 and finishes in nine minutes, well inside the 15 the part is worth.
Reviewing her script, the pattern is consistent. At gaps 2, 4 and 5 she chose options that recycled vocabulary from the lines immediately above or below the gap ('repair', 'volunteers', 'tools'). The correct options in those three gaps opened with 'This idea', 'They' and 'But not everyone'. Elena reads only the sentence before and the sentence after each gap, decides on the spot, and never re-reads the completed paragraph. She describes the part as 'guessing' and asks whether she should read faster or simply learn more vocabulary before the exam.
1. Diagnose the errors. What is Elena actually relying on, and why does the design of Part 6 make that strategy fail? Explain what she should be using instead.
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Elena is using lexical repetition as her main signal. It is the most visible kind of link and can be spotted in a fast scan, so it feels like evidence. It isn't.
Part 6 is built to punish exactly that. The distractors are written so that one or two of them recycle words from the immediate co-text, precisely because a repeated word looks like a thread. Repetition never proves fit. Strong writers vary their lexis and link sentences by other means:
- Reference: pronouns and demonstratives ('this idea', 'they', 'such a scheme') that need an antecedent.
- Conjunction and discourse markers: 'But', 'So', 'As a result' - each demands something specific before or after it.
- Substitution and ellipsis: 'the ones who…', 'so did we'.
- Semantic chains: synonyms and superordinates (repair → fix → mend; tools → equipment) rather than verbatim repeats.
The decisive test is bidirectional. The missing sentence must contain something that needs explaining by what comes before, and provide something that what follows depends on. If Elena's choice leaves 'They' with no plural noun to point at, or 'But not everyone' with no group to disagree with, then the repeated word 'tools' is irrelevant.
Her second error is the two-sentence window. Part 6 gaps are routinely resolved by a sentence two places away. She is checking fit, when the part requires checking coherence across the paragraph.
2. Design a 20-minute re-teach sequence for the next lesson that uses material the class already has.
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Reuse the text they have already done - familiarity frees working memory for the strategy.
0–3 min: the demonstration. Put a three-sentence mini-text on the board with one gap and two candidate sentences: one repeats a word, one opens with 'This'. Ask the class to choose and defend. Establish the principle in one line: never select on a repeated word.
3–8 min: name the links. Students annotate the text in pairs with four symbols - R (reference), C (conjunction), L (lexical chain), S (substitution/ellipsis). For each gap they must draw a line from a word in the option to its partner word in the text. No line, no answer.
8–15 min: predict before you look. Cover the seven options. For gaps 2, 4 and 5, students write what the missing sentence must do: 'must introduce a group who disagreed'. Only then do they uncover the options and match. The gap is now a slot with requirements, not a multiple-choice guess.
15–20 min: timed transfer. A fresh six-gap text, 12 minutes, one rule in force: you may only write a letter when you can point to the partner word. Collect the annotated scripts - the lines are the evidence of reasoning, and they show you whether the strategy transferred or whether Elena simply found a new way to guess.
3. Elena asks whether she should read faster. Answer her, and give her a rule for spending the 15 minutes.
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No - and the answer matters, because 'read faster' would make her worse. She already finishes in nine minutes and leaves six unused. Speed is not the constraint; verification is. Reading faster would shorten the two-sentence window even further.
Suggested budget for the 15 minutes:
- 2 minutes: skim the whole text, including the paragraph openings, to establish topic and the direction of the argument. Note where the writer seems to shift.
- 10 minutes: the six gaps, roughly 90 seconds each. Predict what the sentence must do, then check the candidate against the text both backwards and forwards.
- 3 minutes: read the reconstructed text end to end, gaps filled. Anything that jars - a pronoun without a referent, a contrast with nothing to contrast with - is a signal to swap.
The rule to give her in one sentence: treat your first choice as a hypothesis, not an answer, and only commit when you can name the word in the option and the word in the text that belong together.
Her vocabulary question deserves a short answer too. She is not short of words; she is short of linking devices. Ten minutes a week on reference words and discourse markers - 'this', 'such', 'the former', 'nevertheless', 'sure enough' - will move her further than another list of topic vocabulary.