Information gap An information gap activity is an activity where learners are missing the information they need to complete

a task and need to talk to each other to find it. Example Learner A has a biography of a famous person with all the place names missing, whilst Learner B has the same text with all the dates missing. Together they can complete the text by asking each other questions. In the classroom Information gap activities are useful for various reasons. They provide an opportunity for extended speaking practice, they represent real communication, motivation can be high, and they require subskills such as clarifying meaning and re-phrasing. Typical types of information gap activities you might find include; describe and draw, spot the difference, jigsaw readings and listenings and split dictations. 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 dont 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. Examples:

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 cant 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 partners table is there on the other partners table and vice versa. Students must ask each other questions to discover what is missing in each of their tables.

by Violet Raptou 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 student 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. I teach Core French at the secondary level and students complain that when they go to a French-speaking part of the world, they cannot say what they wish to say in French, even though they have had years of French education. We, therefore, need to actively engage students in speaking activities that are enjoyable and that are based on a more communicative approach. One solution is using information gap activities. 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 satisfy all of the above criteria. The teacher simply explains the activity and reviews the vocabulary needed for the activity. Students are then on their own to complete the task. Each participant plays an important role and the task cannot be accomplished without everyone's participation. Many information gap activities are highly motivational because of the nature of the
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various tasks. Activities that require the solving of a problem or a mystery are especially effective. As teachers, we know whether an activity is of an acceptable level of difficulty for our students. If students are sufficiently prepared for the activity, the level of language accuracy will be acceptable. For the first time this year, I used information gap activities in my French classes and they were very successful. When I tried the first activity, I could not believe that my Core French students were speaking in French continuously for 15-20 minutes. Even though that was the result I desired, I was still amazed because it was the first time that I heard my students speaking in French for such an extended period of time. I did not evaluate students during this activity and not one student expected to receive a mark for participating in these activities. They were all happy to do the activity because it was fun and because they knew that it was helping them to increase their confidence in speaking French. As a result of using information gap activities, I realized that there were other unexpected benefits. For instance, these activities greatly increased their motivation for speaking in French more often. Even after the activities were complete, students made an effort to keep speaking in French not only to me, but to each other as well. After doing only two of these types of activities, students wanted to do them all the time and I was more than happy to include them more often in my lessons. 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. Information Gap Activity An Information Gap Activity is supposed to mimic one of the real-world purposes of communication: to exchange unknown information. The information needed for the lesson should be divided into two parts, usually separated out onto two handouts: information A and information B. Students are divided into pairs; one student is given the handout with information A and the other student will have the handout with information B. The most common format is to present information in a grid layout in which handouts A and B have complementary information. Students will then ask each other questions and try to complete their handouts by filling in the missing information.

In the sample below, students should find out the information missing from their grid by asking the relevant questions of their partner (e.g., student A asks What is the lawyers name?)

Handout A Name Pedro Maite Vanesa Age 35 Profession lawyer student hairdresser Handout B Name Jordi Vanesa Jigsaw Activity A jigsaw is a technique for working with a longer reading text that has obvious logical divisions in the content. Divide the reading into logical sections (these may or may not correspond to paragraphs). Copy each section onto a different colored paper so that all copies of section 1 are pink, for example, all of section 2 are blue, etc. Divide the class into as many groups as there are sections. Give each group ONE section of the reading (i.e. everyone in group 1 gets only the first section). Students must learn the information in their section well enough to present it to someone who has not read their section, and they should be able to answer questions about the content. When all groups are ready (or the time limit you set runs out), have one student from each group come together to form a new group; this new jigsaw group should have one of each of the colored sections represented, each new group containing one person from each of the old groups. In this new group, each student in turn presents the content of the section he/she is an expert on, with the goal of reconstructing the original text. As each student presents, the others should take notes and prepare clarification questions for the presenter. 19 28 Age 22 Profession carpenter lawyer Hometown Barcelona Sevilla Hometown Salamanca

Cceres

Password Password is an excellent technique for developing fluency and circumlocution skills. The basic idea of the game is to have a partner guess what word you are explaining, using only the target language or body language. Some of the variations are as follows: 1. (Fastest and easiest for instructor; minimal preparation time required) Divide class into 2 groups and have them sit in two rows facing one another, so that each person has a partner directly facing him or her. On the board or big sheets of paper, the instructor writes two different lists of 5-7 words each taken from the vocabulary students have been learning-one list behind each row of students, so that each row is able to see one list and will have a different (unseen) list at its back. Partners take turns getting one another to guess the words from the list they can see. To avoid getting bogged down on a single word, the instructor can set a time limit for each word, or limit the number of explanations and guesses for each word to three. Encourage students to skip around on the lists, since there will be people all around working with the same words. After the first pair has finished with their lists, tell all students in one of the rows to shift 3 places to the right, so that they have a chance to work with a new partner, and give them two new lists to work from. 2. (Most fun for students; they can move around and work with lots of different partners; 5-10 minutes preparation time for instructor) Prepare slips of paper or index cards with vocabulary items that students have been studying recently. Ideally, you should have eight times as many cards as there are students (for example, for a class of 30, prepare 240 cards; you can include review items as well to increase the number of items covered). Shuffle the cards and give each student eight of them. Put the extras face-down on a table or desk in front of the room. Students form pairs and try to get their partners to guess the words they have, by using definitions, synonyms, antonyms, explanations, etc., in the target language, or using body language, especially at early levels. Students may not say the word on the card or any of its derivatives in their explanations. To avoid getting bogged down on a single word, the instructor can set a time limit for each word, or limit the number of explanations and guesses for each word to three. After students have guessed each other's words, they exchange their stack of cards with one another and look for new partners. This way everyone listens carefully to the definition of the word they are guessing because in a minute they'll have to define that word to someone else. If a student happens to receive the same word twice, they should pick another word from a group of extras on the table, and give the teacher the "used" word so it stays out of circulation. 3. (Good for review throughout the term).

Instructor makes up packets of vocabulary words, one item per card, and stores each set in an envelope. either from current or previous lessons, or both. Students work in pairs, alternating selecting a word from the envelope and trying to get their partners to guess the word they have, giving definitions, synonyms, antonyms, explanations, etc., in the target language, or using body language, especially at early levels. To avoid getting bogged down on a single word, the instructor can set a time limit for each word, or limit the number of explanations and guesses for each word to three. Semantic Map A semantic map is a visual representation of information that demonstrates the relationships between ideas, or the chronological order in which ideas occurred in a brainstorming session. The mental process involved is a kind of free association, so the resulting map is an interesting window into how the mapmaker thinks and what prejudices he/she may hold on a topic. This activity type is especially useful for review, or for diagnosing what vocabulary a group knows about a topic. The activity begins with a key word or phrase in a circle (on the blackboard, transparency, or butcher paper). The mapmaker(s) then begin to write down information that occurs to them on the topic, linking the new terms to the original term, or to each other. Below is a map constructed by a student of Spanish on the topic of man.

Think, Pair, Share These three terms refer to a sequence, not really an activity type. The
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purpose of the sequence is to allow students to focus on the content of their ideas, then work on expressing the ideas in the target language. Often, following the sequence leads to more and more complex language production (instead of the dead silence that often follows a typical discussion question); students do not feel so intimidated to speak up since they have worked out their ideas and how to say them. (1) Think: Students should first think about the activity or questions and try to complete as much of it on their own as possible. (2) Pair: Next, students may work in pairs to compare or contrast their answers; they can also help each other to express the desired idea in the target language. (3) Share: Individual students, or partner groups from (2), share their answers with the entire class. Venn Diagram A Venn Diagram is a graphic format for representing information that shows a summary of the similarities and differences between two topics. Draw two intersecting circles similar to the pair shown below. One circle represents, for example, all the information students know about the geography of the Basque Country in Spain. The other circle represents all the information they know about Oregon geography. Any features the two places share can be written in the intersection of the circles. The result shows at a glance what the two places have in common and what features are different.

Virginia Reel This is a logistical technique that allows students to practice a similar task repeated times, to develop automated skills or to amass information
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on limited topics from a large number of classmates. Students face each other in two lines and are paired with the student across from them. In an interview activity, for example, students ask the questions of their partner, and when finished (or on cue from the teacher, who has set a time limit), one line should remain still while the other line shifts one space. The student on the end of the line will move to the opposite end of the line. Everyone will be across from the next person in line, thus having a new partner.

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