INFORMATIONAL GAP ACTIVITY

Teachers are often searching for activities to make their classroom more interactive; language teachers in particular are also looking for activities that promote target language use. Info Gap activities are excellent activities as they force the students to ask each other questions; these activities help make the language classroom experience more meaningful and authentic. This section will explain in more detail what Info Gap activities are and why they are useful; it will also give some examples of Info Gap activities for any language classroom.

What is an Info Gap activity?

An Info Gap activity takes place between students, not between a student and a teacher, though a teacher can certainly demonstrate the activity. The two students will be asking each other questions to which they don’t know the answer; these questions are called referential questions. The goal of the activity is for the students to discover certain information, whether about the other person or related to a specific activity. 

What are referential and display questions? 

A referential question is a question to which the person asking does not know the answer. For example, you might ask a new student:
“Where are you from?”     or     “What is your name?”
The teacher does not know the answer to these questions; the purpose of asking these questions is to discover information, similar to the Info Gap activities.

A display question is a question to which the person asking does know the answer. For example, you might ask a student:
“What colour is my sweater”    or     “Do I have long or short hair?
The teacher clearly knows the answer to these questions; the purpose of asking is to promote student speaking, or to prompt students to remember certain information (whether it be vocabulary, grammar, etc.)

Why are Info Gap activities useful?

Info Gap activities are useful because they are very meaningful; all students are involved in the process equally and they are all moving towards a specific purpose. Each student has the task of finding out certain information, and therefore must find a way in which to ask for this information. Motivation is usually quite high in these activities. These activities help move the students from working in a more structured environment into a more communicative environment; they are hopefully using lots of the target language, and in the process discovering where they have gaps. Knowing where these gaps are gives them a direction in which to improve.

In an information gap activity, one person has certain information that must be shared with others in order to solve a problem, gather information or make decisions (Neu & Reeser, 1997). These types of activities are extremely effective in the L2 classroom. They give every student the opportunity to speak in the target language for an extended period of time and students naturally produce more speech than they would otherwise. In addition, speaking with peers is less intimidating than presenting in front of the entire class and being evaluated. Another advantage of information gap activities is that students are forced to negotiate meaning because they must make what they are saying comprehensible to others in order to accomplish the task (Neu & Reeser, 1997).

     Ur (1996) lists the characteristics of a successful speaking activity:

	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.

Information gap activities can also reinforce vocabulary and a variety of grammatical structures taught in class. They allow students to use linguistic forms and functions in a communicative way. These activities bring the language to life for students. Grammar is no longer a concept they have difficulty applying to their speaking. Students have the opportunity to use the building blocks of language we teach them to speak in the target language. 

What are some examples of Info 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.

Als, it exists another kind of activities that we can use with technology.

EXAMPLES OF DIFFERENTS ACTIVITIES.

http://www.proprofs.com/flashcards/story.php?title=simple-future-tense
TENSES Brain Teasers : TENSES Brain Teasers riddles
Action verbs Jigsaw Puzzle Game
Let\s go to the restaurant Word Search Game

REFERENCES:

Neu, H. & Reeser, T. W. (1997). Information Gap Activities for Beginning French Classes. Boston : Heinle & Heinle.

Ur, P. (1996). A Course in Language Teaching: Practice and Theory. Cambridge.

RESOURCES

Klippel, F. (1983). Keep Talking: Communicative fluency activities for language teaching. New York: Cambridge.

Lee, J. F. & VanPatten, B. (1995). Making Communicative Language Teaching Happen. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Neu, H. & Reeser, T. W. (1997). Parle-moi un peu!: Information Gap Activities for Beginning French Classes. Boston : Heinle & Heinle.

Pattison, P. (1987). Developing Communication Skills : A practical handbook for language teachers, with examples in English, French and German. New York: Cambridge.