Information Gap Activities

The job of planning an information gap activity is part of a wider methodological planning that should be considered as part of a skill builder.

There are so many types of activities that give the impression they are information gap activities. Take for example, communicative activities. For some reason, teachers, both new and seasoned, seem to associate information gap activities with speaking when it comes to learning one of the language arts or ESL. This however is not necessarily the case.

As I mentioned in Vocabulary Learning Games, there is a considerable amount of planning involved in a 15 minute information gap activity. While it's true that students like working in pairs and speaking, that is not the only skill that should be considered when planning a lesson using information gap activities.

A task should focus on something, on a specific goal. There are many exercises that you as a teacher can do in order to foster practice of speaking for example, through specific skills. Such activities take much more time and should include maximum participation. Plus speaking needs to be balanced with one of the more recpetive skills like listening or reading.

In terms of methodology however, an information gap should be part of an overall pedagogical consideration in terms of how to cater to methodology by means of making it meaningful, interesting and flexible.