The Information-gap Principle And Its Roles In College English Teaching

As we known that the aim of college English teaching is to develop the learner's communicative competence, so that they will cope with the increasing communicative needs in today's information era. However, the present situation of college English teaching seems to be far from this goal. Exploring the deep cause for this unsatisfactory situation, it is not difficult to find out that there are a number of misconceptions in teacher's understanding about language teaching. Some of them still put much emphasis on the form over the meaning of language. Even those who have accepted the conception about communicative language teaching as an effective approach have some misconceptions about it. For them, communicative language teaching just means paying more attention on the function or meaning of language instead of on the structure of language. Factors responsible for this situation may be multi-dimensional, but the negligence of the Information-gap Principle by GET teacher should be one of the factors responsible for not teaching language communicatively. It is the absence of information gap in much of the language teaching process that makes it non-communicative.Information gap is a necessary element that motivates people into communication. It is admitted that communicative competence should be well developed in communicative activities. The Information-gap Principle will surely have a place in FLT, especially in GET. This is because college English students have already mastered some necessaryknowledge about English before they enter colleges and universities, and the repetition of their learning procedure in the middle school will only make them feel boring about English lesson. What they need mostly is some communicative activities that may stimulate their interests in English study. And the communicative activities based on the Information-gap Principle will meet this demand.This dissertation is divided into Six Chapters.Chapter One introduces the reality of college English teaching and two traditional teaching methods popular in GET: Grammar-Translation Method and Sentence-Text-Analysis Method.Chapter Two deals with the understanding of information gap in FLT; it tries to find out the theoretical basis of the Information-gap Principle from the perspective of language, communication and second language acquisition.Chapter Three describes the functions played by the Information-gap Principle in GET in four parts: the function of the Information-gap Principle in activating learning motivation; in promoting language acquisition; in creating real communicative situation and for developing communicative competence.Chapter Four concentrates on the implications of the Information-gap Principle to teaching language communicatively in GET. It is discussed from two perspectives: teaching contents and teaching process.Chapter Five centers on the applications of the Information-gap Principle in GET. It analyzes the ways to apply the Information-gap Principle to classroom management, to communicative task outside class and to the four skills.Chapter Six comes to the conclusion that the Information-gap Principle plays a significant role in teaching language communicatively in CET. To cultivate college students' communicative competence, the position of the Information-gap Principle in teaching language communicatively must be given enough attention to. But the issue of applying the Information-gap Principle in teaching CET communicatively needs further discussion and research.