help with regexp in gawk file

 
I am trying to remove all words in one list from another list of words.
If I explicitly enumerate the words to remove everything works fine:
     gsub(/to /, "",text);
     gsub(/in /, "",text);
     gsub(/or /, "",text);
 
but if I try to build the list of words in an array no substitutions are
ever done.  How can I properly format the text array to remove the
words?
 
Thanks!
 
BEGIN{
 
 j=0;
  badwords[j++]= "/<a> /";
 badwords[j++]= "/<the> /";
 badwords[j++]= "/<in> /";
       
   text = "a fox jumped into and in the river";
 text2 = "a fox jumped into and in the river";
 
  gsub(/\<a\> /, "", text);
  gsub(/\<the\> /, "", text);
  gsub(/\<in\> /, "", text);
 
 print text;
 
 for (i in badwords)
 {
  gsub(badwords[i], "", text2);
  
 }  
 print text2;
 
 exit(0);
};
{
}
END{}   

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