FCE gapped text practice: A night under the stars
This is a free FCE gapped text practice set: an original article with six sentences removed and seven options to choose from, so one sentence is extra. It belongs to our FCE practice collection. Read our Part 6 gapped text guide first for the method.
By Eleanor BennettLast updated:
Before you start
Part 6 tests how a text holds together: reference words (it, this, she, them), linking words and the logical order of ideas. Aim for about fifteen minutes, because the Reading and Use of English paper has one time limit for all seven parts, so it helps to know how long each part takes you.
- Read the main text first, without the options, to follow the story.
- For each gap, look at the sentence before and the sentence after.
- When you place a sentence, check that its pronouns refer to something that makes sense.
Practice · Reading & Use of English Part 6
Gapped text 1: A night under the stars
Instructions: You are going to read an article about a first visit to a dark-sky area. Six sentences have been removed from the article. Choose from the sentences A–G the one which fits each gap (1–6). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.
### A night under the stars
I have lived in cities all my life, and for me the night sky has always been a dark, orange-tinted ceiling with the occasional aeroplane crossing it. So when a friend invited me to join her astronomy club on a weekend trip to a national park, I said yes mostly out of curiosity. (1) ____ I assumed we would spend the evening queuing to look through expensive telescopes while someone explained, in a language I didn't understand, what we were seeing.
The reality was rather different. When we arrived at the campsite, the club's organiser, a cheerful retired science teacher, collected everyone's phones and locked them in a metal box. A couple of people groaned, and one man pretended he had left his in the car. (2) ____ Even a short glance at a bright screen, she explained, would undo the twenty minutes our eyes needed to adjust properly to the darkness.
For the first quarter of an hour, I saw almost nothing. Then, gradually, the sky began to fill. Stars appeared in places that had been completely empty a moment before, and a pale, cloudy band stretched from one side of the horizon to the other. (3) ____ I had seen photographs of it, of course, but I had always assumed they were edited to make it look more dramatic. Now I realised that the photographs had, if anything, made it look less impressive. No camera, I realised, could capture the sheer depth of it.
There were telescopes, but to my surprise, they were not the main event. Most of the evening was spent lying on our backs on blankets, simply looking, while the camping stoves cooled and the conversation slowly died away. The organiser pointed out constellations with a torch that gave off a weak red light, which apparently does far less damage to night vision than white light. (4) ____ Within an hour I could find three or four of them on my own, which gave me a ridiculous sense of achievement.
Around midnight, as people poured hot chocolate from flasks, the conversation turned to why so few people ever see a sky like this. Light pollution, I learned, is not just a problem for astronomers. (5) ____ Some towns have started to replace their street lights with ones that point downwards, and a few areas have even been officially recognised as dark-sky places, where lighting is carefully controlled. Our organiser had visited several of them and spoke about them the way other people talk about famous beaches.
I drove home the next day tired but strangely energised. Back in the city, I looked up that evening and, as expected, could see only a handful of stars above the rooftops. (6) ____ I knew now what was hidden behind the glow, and that knowledge somehow made the ordinary sky feel a little less ordinary. I have already booked my place on the club's next trip.
Sentences (one is extra)
- A Someone next to me whispered that it was the Milky Way.
- B It confuses migrating birds, disturbs insects and may even affect how well we sleep.
- C To be honest, I wasn't expecting much.
- D Most of them, I later discovered, had been built by the members themselves.
- E This time, though, it didn't bother me in the same way.
- F It was not, she insisted, a punishment.
- G She taught us to use the brightest stars as signposts, moving from one familiar shape to the next.
After you finish
If you got a gap wrong, check what the pronouns in your chosen sentence referred to. Most mistakes happen when a sentence fits the topic of a paragraph but not the exact words around the gap.
To work on understanding a writer's attitude, try the Part 5 practice text. For matching practice, try Reading Part 7.
Questions about this practice set
Is there always an extra sentence?
Yes. There are seven sentences and six gaps, so one sentence doesn't fit anywhere. It often looks right on topic but breaks the reference words.
What if I change my mind about one gap?
Check the other gaps too. Because each sentence can only be used once, one change can affect another answer.