Expanding the Information Gap

Many language teachers use information gap activities to get students talking in their classrooms.  These are activities in which one partner knows something that the other partner does not.  The job of each partner is to ask for information they don’t know and communicate the information that they do.  Here is a typical information gap activity that I used yesterday in my German class.  I’ll give it to you in English:

What presents did Matthias get his family?

Partner A gets this chart:                                             

recipient	gift
mother	A wallet
father
sister
brother	A Steven King novel
grandma
grandpa	A tie

Partner B gets this chart:       

recipient	gift
mother
father	A watch
sister	A Justin Bieber poster
brother
grandma	slippers
grandpa

So partner B doesn’t know what the mother got and has to ask Partner A.  Partner A needs to fill in the father’s gift and has to ask Partner B.

In thinking about this, though, I think it’s kind of boring.  The kids did it, but they didn’t really care about Matthias and his stupid gift list.  How could I spice it up?

I started to think of more interesting information gap activities. How could  I expand on this type and up students’ interest?

•  Make it more personal.  Use names of class members and plug them in to the chart with humorous gifts.Why can’t the grandma get the Justin Bieber poster, for example?  I think there are ways to mix this up and still use vocabulary that I want to reinforce.
• Have the students generate the chart content.  Students could ask and fill in what students got for Christmas/Hanukah and what they gave family members.  This would take more preparation because students would have to ask for unknown vocabulary.  A good pre-activity could be to brainstorm gift ideas.
•   Extend the activity in some way.  The chart made me think about that puzzle book favorite, the logic puzzle.  This has the added bonus of asking students to do communication and higher-ordered thinking.  Here’s an example that I made for my other class, which is studying occupations.  I made a simple one which we did together as a class, since most kids weren’t familiar with the form.

Each person got the same introduction and table, but different information :

These five friends went to high school together.  They all have different professions and nobody has two jobs.  Share the information you know and ask your partner what he knows that you do not.  Then discuss and arrive at a solution.

Josef
Gerda
Ludwig
Hannes
Barbara
	fireman	Pilot	author	postman	retiree

 A.      Josef has a dangerous job.  His job has nothing to do with airlines or airplanes  Gerda went to college and now isn’t working.  Barbara didn’t go to college, but likes her job, because she gets to work outside. 

 B.      Barbara’s job doesn’t have a lot of stress because it’s not dangerous.After school, Ludwig went into the military.  He doesn’t like to write and doesn’t do it well. Hannes likes to read and is afraid of flying and fire.

There are a lot of other information gap activities which go beyond the chart-fill-in model.  In future posts, I plan to explore them.  Stay tuned!