An information gap task is a technique in

language teaching Language education – the process and practice of teaching a second or foreign language – is primarily a branch of applied linguistics, but can be an interdisciplinary field. There are four main learning categories for language education: ...

where students are missing information necessary to complete a task or solve a problem, and must communicate with their classmates to fill in the gaps. It is often used in

communicative language teaching Communicative language teaching (CLT), or the communicative approach (CA) , is an approach to language teaching that emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of study. Learners in environments using communication to learn and ...

and

task-based language learning Task-based language teaching (TBLT), also known as task-based instruction (TBI), focuses on the use of authentic language to complete meaningful tasks in the target language. Such tasks can include visiting a doctor, conducting an interview, or cal ...

. Information gap tasks are contrasted with ''opinion gap tasks'', in which all information is shared at the start of the activity, and learners give their own opinions on the information given.

Examples

One example of an information gap task is a spot-the-difference activity. Another is an activity where one student is given a picture, and must describe it to another student, who creates a drawing from the description. Further examples are students sharing information to complete a class timetable, and an activity where students must share information about their families and then draw each other's family trees.

Testing

Information gap tasks are also used to test language ability. According to Underhill, these kind of tasks have the advantage that they produce concrete evidence of

communicative competence The concept of communicative competence, as developed in linguistics, originated in response to perceived inadequacy of the notion of linguistic competence. That is, communicative competence encompasses a language user's grammatical knowledge of sy ...

, or of the lack of it, but the disadvantage of only testing the ability to communicate factual information. He goes on to say that with information gap tasks, care must be taken not to create a test which tests general problem-solving ability more than language fluency.

References

Bibliography

* * * * {{Language teaching methods Language-teaching techniques