Using information gap activities to promote meaningful communication

THANH HOA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
THANH HOA CITY EDUCATION AND TRAINING OFFICE
EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE
USING INFORMATION GAP ACTIVITIES TO PROMOTE MEANINGFUL COMMUNICATION
 THANH HOA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
THANH HOA CITY EDUCATION AND TRAINING OFFICE
EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE
USING INFORMATION GAP ACTIVITIES TO PROMOTE MEANINGFUL COMMUNICATION
 Writer: Trinh Thi Thu Duyen
 Position : Teacher 
 School : Quang Trung Junior High School 
 Subject: English
THANH HOA, 2015
Thanh ho¸ n¨m 2012
 N¨m häc 2006 - 2007 
n¨m häc 2006 – 2007 
CONTENTS
A. INTRODUCTION
B. MAIN CONTENT
I. What is a gap?
II. Types of gaps
III. Examples of information gaps activities
IV. Benefits of using information gap activities
V. Drawbacks of using information gap activities 
VI. Teacher’s roles in information gap activities
VII. Strategies of implementing information gap activities
VIII. Stages of information gap activities
IX. Some applicable information gap activities
X. The implementing of the lesson plan
XI. Effectiveness of the experience initiatives
C. CONCLUSION
D. APPENDIX
E. REFERENCE BOOKS
INTRODUCTION
One of the challenges many second language teachers face is motivating their students to speak in the target language. Confident students always participate and students who are less confident are reluctant to speak. Even when students speak in the target language, they are usually answering a question and this approach greatly limits students’ output. Oral presentations provide opportunities for students to speak in the target language for an extended period of time and these activities are useful, but they should not be the only opportunities students have to speak at length. Because students prepare for these presentations by writing a script and then rehearsing it, they have difficulty speaking in the target language spontaneously because they are given little opportunity to do so. When students choose to learn a language, they are interested in learning to speak that language as fluently as possible. We, therefore, need to actively engage students in speaking activities that are enjoyable enough to interest the students. Further more, one of the principal tenets of the communicative approach to language teaching is that the learners are involved in actual interaction in the classroom. This interaction must be meaningful and involve an authentic use of language. 
To help students develop their communicative efficiency in speaking, there are some activities used in the classroom to promote the development of speaking skills in our learners. However, in this writing I will just try to center on information gap activities as one of the strategies to enhance meaningful and communicative speaking. I will discuss some main points related to information gap activities: the meaning of gap, types of gap, types of information, examples of information gap activities, benefits as well as the drawbacks of using information gap activities, the teacher's roles, some strategies of implementing information gap activities, and the stages of information gap speaking lessons. And finally I will suggest some useful and applicable information gap activities that I have adapted from the text books of Tieng Anh 6, 7 into my classrooms.
MAIN CONTENT
What is a gap?
In this context, gap may be taken to mean difference. If there are two students, A and B, and if A has some information which B does not, and possibly vice-versa, then there is a difference or gap between the two students. A task which requires B to find out the information that A has (i.e. a task which closes the gap) will provide a reason for communication. 
Types of gap
Generally, the activities which depend on bridging a gap could be in the form of the following:
The opinion gap: Everyone has different opinions, feelings and thoughts about the world. Finding out about someone’s feelings and opinions helps close the gap between people. The number of personalized activities in many textbooks shows the value of this gap.
The experience gap: All students in classes have had different experiences in their lives, so this type is a good task for communication. Questionnaires can be exploited the experience gap, particularly those that aim to practice past form, e.g. a questionnaire to find out what sports they like most.
The knowledge gap: Students know different things about the world. This gap can be exploited in brainstorms and general knowledge-style quizzes.
The information gap: This is the classic gap exploited by the communicative approach. It is a situation where one person knows something, which the other does not. This cultivates curiosity/ inquisitiveness, inventive nature, confidence, problem solving, phrasing questions, discovering questions, and above all communication. The information gap is ideally suited to pair and small group work and usually relies upon pre-prepared information cards.
Examples of information gap activities
20 questions: 
Students work in pairs or small groups. One student chooses an object or person and keeps it a secret. The other students must ask yes or no questions to determine what that object/person is. The maximum number of questions is 20.
Guess the card: 
Students work in partners. This is similar to 20 questions only the students already have the object chosen for them. One student holds a card so that their partner can’t see. The partner must then ask yes or no questions to determine what is on the card. Often teachers structure this activity to fit with the theme of a particular unit. 
Find your partner: 
Whole class participates. Students are each given a card with an image on it; there are two of each image. Students must circulate and try to find the person with the same image by asking yes or no questions. The students may not ask “Do you have an elephant” if their image is, for example, an elephant. They must ask more descriptive questions, for example “Does your thing have 4 legs?” or “Does your thing live in the jungle?”
Words on back: 
Students work in large groups or as a whole class. Each student has a word attached to his or her back; the students must then circulate asking each other yes or no questions to determine what word is on their back. 
Same different: 
Students work in pairs. Each has a different picture that should not be shown to their partner. The students take turns asking each other yes or no questions to find out how the pictures are different. 
Fill in the chart: 
Students work in partners. The students are both given tables with information missing. What is missing in one partner’s table is there on the other partner’s table and vice versa. Students must ask each other questions to discover what is missing in each of their tables.
Jigsaw activities:
A jigsaw activity is a group activity in which each member is dependent on the others for part of the information. In other words, in order to complete a task, group members must cooperate. 
Benefits of using information gap activities 
Information gap activities have increasingly achieved popularity in recent years and have been recommended as a way forward in English language teaching. Below are the benefits of using information gap activities in teaching English language skills. 
- Learners talk a lot. As much as possible of the period of time allotted to the activity is in fact occupied by learner talk.
- Participation is even. Classroom discussion is not dominated by a minority of talkative participants: all get a chance to speak, and contributions are fairly evenly distributed.
- Motivation is high. Learners are eager to speak: because they are interested in the topic and have something new to say about it, or because they want to contribute to achieving a task objective.
- Language is of an acceptable level. Learners express themselves in utterances that are relevant, easily comprehensible to each other, and of an acceptable level of language accuracy.
Drawbacks of using information gap activities 
One drawback to this type of exercise is that it could train students to engage in conversations that resemble police interrogations rather than interactive discussions. It should be understood by teachers and students that many varieties of information gap activities are actually a type of interactive drill rather than a model of conversation.
Also, teachers need to be clear to students about the purpose of the activity. Some students mistakenly believe that the purpose is to completely fill in all of the blanks on the page. Teachers need to emphasize that the important part is the process of asking and answering in English. Otherwise, some students will talk in their native language, peek at each others' papers, just recite the answers, or any number of other ways to quickly rush to the end. 
Despites all of these drawbacks, information gap activities can serve very useful roles in the foreign language classroom. 
Teacher’s roles in information – gap activities 
Facilitator
First, as facilitator of communication, the teacher may need to perform in a variety of specific roles. These include the following:
- He may perform the familiar role of language instructor. He is the material provider and activity initiator. The students may not have the capacity to begin the communicative information gap activity directly because they may lack the knowledge in linguistic forms or skills, which compose communicative ability. 
- He is the organizer of the classroom activities. The main aim of the teacher when organizing an activity is to tell the students what they are to talk about (or write or read about), give clear instructions about what exactly their task is, get the activity going, and then organize feedback when it is over. This sounds remarkably easy, but can be disastrous if teachers have not thought out exactly what they are going to say beforehand. 
In addition to this, the teacher has to break the whole class into pairs or groups, and decide on procedures of pair, group or class work. When the information gap is being filled, the teacher has to walk around the classroom and make sure the communication is going smoothly.
- He may be the error-corrector. At the stage of pre-communicative activity, the linguistic errors should be strictly monitored and corrected, but at the group work and class work levels in the process of communicative activity, errors are viewed as the unavoidable by-products of communication and can be ignored unless they hinder communication.
- He may choose to be a by-stander, making no intervention after initiating the proceedings, and let communication take place through independent activities.
- While such an independent activity is in progress, he may act as consultant or adviser, walking to and from in the classroom and helping where necessary or when asked. 
Participant
There is no reason why the teacher should not participate as an equal in the activity. He can offer his information, and at the same time stimulate and present new language, without taking the main initiative for communication away from the students themselves.
Observer and learner
The teacher may also act as an observer and learner. When the independent activity is in progress he may move about the classroom in order to monitor the strengths and weaknesses of the students, as a basis for planning future learning activities. He can use the weaknesses as signs for learning needs which he must cater for later, probably through more controlled, pre-communicative activities.
Strategies of Implementing Information Gap Activities 
Information gap activities should be implemented via some strategies, which will provoke learning by a large extent to a learner’s own personal investment of time, effort, and attention to the second language in the form of an individualized battery of strategies for comprehending and producing the language. The following are some techniques used to implement information gap activities: 
Pair work or group work: 
In order to elicit information and opinions, the learners need to interact among themselves. They should spend most of their time working in pairs or groups, finding out their peers’ points of view, transmitting their own conceptions, exchanging ideas, and questing for clues for solutions. Thus, dividing the learners into pairs and groups is an inevitable and important strategy to implement information gap activities. This ensures the successful function of the information gap activities in teaching speaking in which group work can help achieve the goals of anxiety reduction and meaningful communication. However, effective group work in the classroom does not occur automatically and thus the teacher’s careful involvement is required as in the following steps: 
Firstly, the teacher should plan and prepare for the group work activities ahead of the speaking lesson because the good designs of the activities will result in “more negotiation of meaning, more feedback and faster acquisition”. 
Secondly, the engagement of the teacher in the group work is important.
Thirdly, the teacher should allot roles to each member within group reasonably. As it is suggested that mixed groups including different proficient members can work better than “homogeneous groups”. Additionally, the students should be seated in a way that they can talk together easily, keep eye contact, share materials and talk in a lower voice.
In fact, information gap activities assist students to achieve their goals of meaningful communication. Through pair and group work they can get more opportunities to speak and feel more confident about speaking after cooperating to practice. 
Furthermore, they get enjoyment from learning language, which motivates them to reach a higher level. But teachers should take into consideration that group work in speaking also has its negative effects. For instance, students may overuse the first language or engage in “off-task talk.”
Personalization and Individualization:
As we all know that information gap activities collect views not only from others but also from one’s own contributions as well. It is both speakers’ conceptions that close the gap between them. Personalization activities provide the learners opportunities to express their opinions, suggestions, or taste, to share their real life experiences or ideas, and to apply their issues or concerns to some controversial topics. And individualization activities allow the learners to act at their own pace, in their own manner and style, and on the topics or content of their own choice. Then they will find their own way, taking charge of their learning, and make their own opportunities for practice in using the language inside and outside the classroom.
Interest:
Interest is particularly important for the implementation of information gap activities. To stimulate learners’ involvement, interest requires that the activities be designed with some essential characteristics, such as those in games, role-playing, curiosity-arousing activities; imagination-involving activities; real-life touching experiencing activities; visual or auditory attracting activities; in addition to a clear goal and a meaningful problem-solving process. Making the information gap activities interesting will ensure a high involvement of learners and keeps the motivation ongoing. 
Variety:
A variety of information gap activities and techniques are always essential in all teaching and learning. They will accommodate varieties of learning styles and individuals. Constant alteration of activities, techniques and approaches can provoke greater motivation and interest as well as further increased longing to fill in the gaps. Variety also means great several contributions from the learners. If the information gap activities are created with plenty of potentials for learners, the desire to learn from the learners could be greatly increased. 
Stages of an Information Gap Lesson 
The teachers must be careful during preparing for lesson plan, so they have to choose the most perfect ways to implement their lessons successfully. Below are some steps that teachers should take into consideration when setting a lesson plan by using information gap activities, 
Objectives 
The objectives of each lesson are respectively derived from the integrated skill texts. The researcher took into consideration the speaking skills intended to be developed in this study and student centered activities. Students find and share information by asking and answering questions in order to complete a task. 
Key words 
The key words were chosen from the highlighted words in the lesson.
Key structure 
The key structure of each lesson is chosen to apply information gap activities to help in understanding the text. Moreover, its function is related to the topic and the main theme of the text. 
Estimated time 
Each lesson takes 45 minutes. The time varies, but usually ranges between (05) and (10) minutes for each one. 
Resources and teaching aids 
The student's book & workbook, the worksheets, the evaluation sheets, video, pictures, maps, newspaper, LCD, lap top and other materials are used as resources and teaching aids . They are selected appropriately for each lesson. 
Warming up 
In this activity, two students share information to complete a task. In one- way gap activities, one student has all the information (e.g., one student describes a picture and the other learner draws it). In two- way gap activities, both students have some information and must share it with each other to complete the task. Because this activity usually combines speaking and listening with reading and writing, all the skills are practiced. 
Procedure and techniques 
The teacher prepares a master handout based on information, language structures, and vocabulary the students have been working on. Then, the teacher deletes pieces of information on two sets of handouts. For example, Handout “A” will have some information deleted that handout “B” will provide. Handout “B” will have other pieces of information deleted that handout “A” will provide. For example, in a work place context the master could be a weekly schedule or list of work tasks. The teacher can make one side more challenging than the other, to meet the needs of learners at different levels. 
Pre-teach and practice vocabulary and structures for the particular task. Students should also be familiar with question and answer formulas (e.g., “What time is ___” and “It’s at ___”), and ways to ask for clarification (e.g., “Excuse me, can you repeat,” or “I’m sorry, I don’t understand”). These can be introduced in the first days of classes, and recycled, adapted, and extended over time. 
Explain the information-gap procedures by modeling a sample gap activity with an able volunteer from the class. 
Have students work with a partner. One student in each pair gets Handout “A” and the other gets Handout “B”. Ask two students to model the asking and answering of questions in the gap activity before the whole class begins the activity. 
Learners ask and answer questions and record answers until both form “A” and form “B” have been completed. 
Ask students to compare their papers with each other. 
To complete the activity with the whole group, teacher can ask volunteers to come up to the board to fill in information they’ve gathered from their partners. Or teacher can ask students to report the information they have in their handout. This helps solidify the knowledge and gives some slower learners or pairs a chance to catch up and check their work without stress. 
Evaluation 
Walking around the room observing learners during the activity gives a chance to know how well individual learners use and understand English in the activity and download some notes .
Some applicable information gap activities
Below is a list of