This can be used to probe in cases of suspected plagiarism. The concept is that if one is the author of a paper and is presented with a paragraph (or so) of that paper in "hole-ized" form, that one will be able to fill in most or all of the words correctly. This is not because of having the paper memorized, but because of remembering (more or less) how one customarily writes. The remaining text provides many cues, and therefore the author should do well.
A person who is not the author should be able to fill in some of the words correctly because of the cues and context. However, it is unlikely that a non-author will do very well. If a non-author reads and re-reads the paper enough times to get a great familiarity with it, then this test will fail. What is the chance that the person who copies will put in that much effort?

This version numbers the "holes" and gives both the original text with the 5 words in bold, and also a numbered table of the words. This table may make it easier to score a students's answers.

A version which only gives the the original text with the holes.

Background and Discussion

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Copyright 2002, 2011, 2021 by Henry E. Schaffer