A Study On Promoting Junior Middle School Students' Participation In English Class By Information Gap

As we know, the aim of Junior High School English teaching is to develop students'communicative competence, so that they will cope with the increasing communicative needs in their future study and life. However, the present situation of Junior High School English teaching seems to be far from this goal. Exploring the deep cause for this situation, it is not difficult to find out that there are a number of misconceptions in teachers'understanding about language teaching. Some of them still put much emphasis on the form over the meaning of language. The negligence of the Information-gap Principle by Junior High School English teachers 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 lessons which lack communication make most Junior High School students feel bored. What they need most is some communicative activities that may stimulate their interest in English study. And the communicative activities based on the Information-gap Principle will meet this demand.This dissertation proposes to carry out information-gap tasks in Junior High School English class. The objective is to enhance students'participation dynamics by promoting individual contributions during the English classes. Reported in this dissertation is an empirical study to test whether information-gap tasks are capable of enhancing students'participation dynamics in English class. Results from the study reveal that the subjects'participation dynamics in Junior High School English classes before and after the experiment has changed positively. That means information-gap tasks do help to enhance students'activeness in English class.This dissertation consists of five chapters:Chapter One gives a glimpse of current situation of English teaching in Junior High School and examines some problems observed in Junior High School English class. Then the author proposes the research focus --- information-gap tasks in Junior High School English class.Chapter Two reviews relevant studies on information gap in China as well as in some other countries, which mainly focus on the definition of information-gap and information-gap tasks in English teaching.Chapter Three presents details of the empirical study including the information about the subjects, instruments and experimental procedure. Samples of information-gap tasks used in the experiment are also presented and analyzed in this chapter.Chapter Four discusses the results of the experiment in detail. Based on the discussion, the research hypothesis put forward on Chapter Three is analyzed.Chapter Five concludes the major findings of the empirical study and elicits some implications and suggestions for further research.