Creating Information Gaps In Middle School English Classroom:An Action Research

The curriculum reform and quality-oriented education have encouraged English teachers to attempt various kinds of methods to improve classroom learning and teaching and many classrooms have become apparently vigorous.However,due to lacking teacher is awareness of information gap as a critical element of commuicative classroom,there is little effect on raising students' interest in partidicipation in classroom activities and their abilities to speak English for communication.By"information gap",we mean unknown information existing between the two parties of communication,that is,one knows certain information and needs to get it accross,and the other does not have and needs to obtain this information.The very existence of"Information gap" makes communication necessary;Only with information gap can language classroom interaction can get closer to real-life commuication.Information gap activities are classroom activities in which students are given different fragments of information,and then they share these incomplete information by communicating to complete a common task.It is the core of the communicative approach to English Teaching.The present study as an action research made an attempt to apply the information gap element to middle school English classroom,with the intention to test the the effectiveness of "Information gap"in raising students' interest in partication of English classroom and improving their abilities to speak Enlgish for communicationBased on the literature review,the researcher made the action plan with a number of strategies of applying information gap element in English classes.First,asking more referential questions and requesting students'authentic answers in T-S interaction;Second,using information gap element in language presentation.Third,setting up various information gap activities in language practice.The action plan was carried out during the semester.A variety of ways to collect datat was used,including questionnaire,interview,classroom observation,teaching journals and oral tests.The analysis of the data finds that application of information gap activities has produced good effect.First,students'affect and attitude had a very big change,with greatly increased interest in learning English.Second,students' participation of classroom activity has been greatly improved and they become much more willing to join in English communication in class.Third,students' oral English has been considerably improved and they can speak much more fluent English with more variety of expressions.What is more the teacher as researcher herself has developed in both her oral English and her teaching competence.