The Grammar Collection is taking a short, well deserved break while I stock up on new activities for you.
So, in the meantime, I feel it is time for something a little different.
The majority of you, I am sure, will use gap fill activities in your classes. They are a great way to practice and consolidate new vocabulary in a more natural (written) context and are also great for working on grammar and tenses.
If you are anything like me, you write up the text and then replace the words you want your students to fill in, with a series of underscores. So you end up with a sentence that looks like this "My name is Matt and I really ______ chocolate". Or, you might include one line per letter to give your students that extra bit of help. Which leads to a sentence that looks like "My name is Matt and I really _ _ _ _ chocolate". Which is fine, but you either end up with gaps that aren't long enough for the intended word or having to carefully count the letters of each word to make sure you have enough underscores.
With this in mind I have taken a step into the world of font design and created "Gap Fill". Once you've installed it (instructions below) all you need to do is type up, or copy and paste your text into a word document, highlight the words you want your students to fill in and change the font to "Gap Fill". This will automatically create the exact number of spaces for any and every word! It won't change any punctuation but letters (both upper and lower cases) and numbers will change.
Hopefully, it will make your life easier and your gap fills better!
Installation Instructions
Windows 10/8/7/Vista
Select the font files (.ttf, .otf or .fon) then Right-click > Install
in any version of Windows
Place the font files (.ttf, .otf or .fon) into the Fonts folder, usually C:\Windows\Fonts or C:\WINNT\Fonts
(can be reached as well by the Start Menu > Control Panel > Appearance and Themes > Fonts).
Mac OS X 10.3 or above (including the FontBook)
Double-click the font file > "Install font" button at the bottom of the preview.
You will probably need to restart the program you want to use the new font in, before it appears in the font list.