Abstract: Through the internship, the author found that junior high school students’ oral English is far from the goal of Chinese education in English. There are several reasons contributing to it. Firstly, traditionally teachers just focus on practicing pattern drills. The students also treat teachers as the only resource of learning English thus lack the ability of learning by themselves. The usage of information gap will avoid these problems. This thesis introduces several teaching tasks based on information-gap principle in junior high school. They are divided into seven types: Jigsaw tasks, Information-exchange tasks, problem-solving tasks, story-telling tasks, difference-finding tasks, role-playing tasks and opinion-exchanging tasks. These tasks of information gap provide students more opportunities to communicate. Everyone shares information with others to narrow or decrease the information gap, to eventually solve problems. The active participation of students stimulates their enthusiasm of learning, enhances the consciousness and authenticity of their language activities. It also conveys the communicative principle of foreign language teaching. 

Keywords: Information Gap; oral English; task

CONTENTS

Abstract

摘要：

1. Introduction1

2. Literature Review.2

2.1 Communicative Competence

2.2 The Input Hypothesis and The Affective Filter Hypothesis

2.3 Motivation

2.4 Information Gap Studies in China

3.Task Design Based on Information Gap.4

    3.1 Jigsaw Tasks

    3.2 Information-exchanging Tasks

3.3 Problem-solving Tasks

3.4 Story-telling Tasks

3.5 Difference-finding Tasks

3.6 Role-playing Tasks

3.7 Opinion-exchanging Tasks

4. Reflection on the Tasks9

5. Conclusion.10

Bibliography12

Acknowledgments.13