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Gapped text practice: the pleasures of getting lost

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Independent practice in advanced exam skills, not an official test: restore six missing sentences in a reflective essay, then answer questions on attitude, reference and implication.

The pleasures of getting lost

Maps have made us worse at wandering. (1) ___ The phone in the pocket speaks with a calm authority, and we have learned to obey it in the way that earlier generations obeyed a signpost.

Yet anyone who has taken a wrong turn in a strange town and been rewarded with a courtyard, a bakery or a view will recall the experience with more affection than any efficiently completed route. (2) ___ Psychologists who study memory suggest that effort and surprise are what fix a place in the mind; a journey with neither leaves hardly a trace.

This is not an argument for abandoning navigation altogether. (3) ___ Nobody sensible wishes to wander across mountains in fog out of principle. What is worth defending is something smaller: the willingness, on an ordinary afternoon with nothing urgent waiting, to leave the instructions switched off and see where the streets lead.

The practice is harder than it sounds. (4) ___ Each time we hesitate at a junction, a voice inside us asks why we should risk twenty minutes when the screen would settle the matter in two. The honest answer is that the twenty minutes may be the only ones of the day that we remember. (5) ___ For that, a little disorientation is a modest price.

Writers on travel have long suspected as much, and the better ones tend to pay more attention to the unplanned afternoon than to the monument they set out to see. (6) ___ Perhaps the best way to begin is with a rule so gentle that it hardly counts as one: once a week, take the second street on the left, and see.

Choose the missing sentence

Choose the sentence, A, B, C or D, that fits each gap in the text. Only one sentence is correct for each gap.

Gap 1: Which sentence fits best?
- a) These days a glowing arrow marks our position at every moment, and the idea of not knowing where we are has become almost unthinkable.
- b) Wandering, in contrast, has become a skill that more and more people practise every day.
- c) Few travellers in earlier centuries had access to maps of any kind.
- d) Printed maps are, of course, far cheaper than the devices that replaced them.
Gap 2: Which sentence fits best?
- a) Such routes are remembered fondly because they are always the quickest.
- b) The detour, it seems, is remembered precisely because it was not planned.
- c) The affection soon fades once the traveller returns to a familiar town.
- d) The route, by contrast, was chosen because other people had recommended it.
Gap 3: Which sentence fits best?
- a) Navigation devices have, in fact, become less accurate in recent years.
- b) Nearly every journey is, in fact, best made without any assistance.
- c) The writer's own sense of direction has always been excellent.
- d) There are journeys, whether across open country or to an urgent appointment, on which a reliable route is simply indispensable.
Gap 4: Which sentence fits best?
- a) Most people find it easy to ignore their phones for an entire day.
- b) The pull of efficiency is strong, and it works quietly, through a thousand small decisions rather than one large one.
- c) Once learned, wandering remains a habit that needs no effort at all.
- d) Few of us have any junctions left at which to hesitate.
Gap 5: Which sentence fits best?
- a) A reliable route will always remain preferable to an uncertain one.
- b) Those twenty minutes can generally be recovered later in the day.
- c) What is gained is not a shortcut to anywhere, but a place that has quietly become ours.
- d) Every junction, after all, offers exactly the same two choices.
Gap 6: Which sentence fits best?
- a) No traveller has ever followed this advice for more than a day.
- b) Monuments, unlike side streets, are rarely worth the effort of finding.
- c) Readers who prefer monuments will find little of interest in such books.
- d) If there is a lesson here, it is that attention comes more easily when the way is not already known.

Tone, reference and implication

Choose the best answer, A, B, C or D, according to the completed text.

What is the writer's attitude to navigation by phone?
- a) Hostile: it should be abandoned altogether
- b) Measured: it is useful but can limit what we notice
- c) Indifferent: it makes no difference to travellers
- d) Enthusiastic: it improves our memory
Why does the writer mention walking across mountains in fog?
- a) To show that wandering is dangerous
- b) To describe a journey the writer has made
- c) To mark the limits of the argument
- d) To criticise people who use maps
In the phrase a voice inside us, whose voice is meant?
- a) A friend giving advice
- b) Our own habit of choosing efficiency
- c) The phone's recorded instructions
- d) A psychologist's warning
What is implied by the twenty minutes may be the only ones of the day that we remember?
- a) The rest of the day is usually forgotten because it is routine.
- b) Twenty minutes is the ideal length for a walk.
- c) The writer has measured how long people remember journeys.
- d) People should spend their whole day lost.
What tone does the ending have?
- a) Warning and urgent
- b) Gentle and slightly playful
- c) Formal and scientific
- d) Bitter and ironic

Answer key

Choose the missing sentence

a) These days a glowing arrow marks our position at every moment, and the idea of not knowing where we are has become almost unthinkable.It introduces the technology that The phone in the pocket then develops. The second option contradicts the opening claim and the others do not lead into the phone.
b) The detour, it seems, is remembered precisely because it was not planned.The next sentence explains why unplanned effort and surprise fix a place in memory. The first option is wrong because wrong turns are not the quickest, and the other two do not lead to the explanation.
d) There are journeys, whether across open country or to an urgent appointment, on which a reliable route is simply indispensable.The paragraph begins by saying that navigation need not be abandoned, and the next sentence agrees that nobody wants to be lost in fog. Only this option supports that concession.
b) The pull of efficiency is strong, and it works quietly, through a thousand small decisions rather than one large one.The following sentence shows how the pull works, through a small decision at each junction. The first and third options contradict harder than it sounds.
c) What is gained is not a shortcut to anywhere, but a place that has quietly become ours.For that refers to what is gained, so the gap must name a benefit that a little disorientation is a modest price for. The other options do not give a benefit.
d) If there is a lesson here, it is that attention comes more easily when the way is not already known.It sums up the writers' observation about unplanned afternoons and leads naturally to the suggestion about how to begin. The others are extreme or off topic.

Tone, reference and implication

b) Measured: it is useful but can limit what we noticeThe writer accepts that navigation is needed but argues that it can stop us noticing and remembering places.
c) To mark the limits of the argumentIt is a concession: the writer is not recommending wandering where it would be unsafe.
b) Our own habit of choosing efficiencyIt is a figure of speech for the traveller's own inner reasoning about efficiency.
a) The rest of the day is usually forgotten because it is routine.The remark implies that efficient, routine parts of the day leave no lasting impression.
b) Gentle and slightly playfulThe rule is described as so gentle it hardly counts as one, which is a light and slightly humorous suggestion.