An Empirical Study On Applying Information-gap Tasks To Enhance Students’ Participation In Junior English Classroom

The purpose of English teaching in Junior Middle School is to cultivate learners’ ability to use language. English Curriculum Standards(2012) has pointed out that all kinds of language knowledge should be from the point of use of language and lay a solid foundation for learners to use English in the process of doing activities as well. It can be seen clearly that the cultivation of students’ language competence is a key aspect in teaching objectives. However, in current English teaching classes, many students show little interests in English learning and classroom activities, which results in their low participation in English class. Therefore, how to improve students’ participation in English learning is of great importance.Through the author’s classroom observation, the reason of the above phenomenon largely lies in the absence of information gap principle in current English language teaching. Without information gap, it is impossible for students to have real communication that can arouse their interests in English classroom. Language communication should be established on the basis of the information gap. Thus, the present paper, from the perspective of the information gap principle, tries to explore English classroom teaching activities by carrying out information gap tasks to answer the following three questions:1) What is the impact of information gap tasks on students’ participation in English class? 2) Do information gap tasks have significant effect on students’ English achievements? 3) How do information gap tasks affect students’ English achievements?Based on both quantitative and qualitative research methods, the experimental study employs questionnaires, interviews, tests and classroom observation. A total of 90 students from a middle school in Qingtian, Zhejiang province are involved in the present study. Among those students, sixteen students are interviewed and ten students are chosen to be observed in order to collect detailed information about their changes after implementing the information gap tasks in English teaching class. Before the experiment, the author used classroom participation questionnaire and English test to testify the participants’ current participation situation and their English achievement. After ten-week experiment, participants’ classroom participation and English achievement were collected again. Then the author applied SPSS 16.0 to analyze the collected data. The results showed that information gap tasks can significantly improve students’ participation in English class. Besides, students’ English achievement can be enhanced by carrying out information gap tasks. In the meanwhile, information gap tasks can not only make English classroom more attractive to the students and change their attitude towards English learning, but also have a positive influence on students’ motivation and self-confidence. At last, based on the results of the present study, some pedagogical implications and suggestions are presented for middle school English teachers.