Qualifications of pedagogues under bukhara state university

CHAPTER II. BENEFITS OF USING INFORMATION GAP ACTIVITY IN SPEAKING CLASSES
2.1. The advantages and disadvantages of using information gap activities
The use of information gap operations to improve the speaking skills of learners has many benefits. According to Arung (2012), using information gap operations is the route to promoting speaking capacity. Rees, (2002) and Kayi, (2006) also talked about learners having a room and great possibilities to practice English in and out of the classroom using information gap operations. It can also facilitate language acquisition and create a true atmosphere of interaction (Doughty and Pica, 1986). ). Many grammatical structures and many vocabulary can build up information gap operations (Raptou, 2002). Authentic materials are used according to Basturkmen (1994) information gap operations. When using information gap operations, students will be pleased and inspired to talk, which will boost their trust because they are free to respond (Raptou, 2002; Rosmaliwarnis, 2007). Students must complete the task through meaning negotiation (Neu and Reeser, 1997).
1. Activities involving information gaps motivate learners to speak. Collaborative and individual efforts are a method of studying foreign languages. Students speak freely together to gather information from other learners that produces a non-formal scenario that leads to more relaxed learners being involved. If there is a gap in data, the discussion between learners will be interesting and meaningful.
2.Activities with information gaps are appropriate for all levels by making some changes from the basic level to advance levels. Teachers as a monitor and students as participant activities are planned for beginners and middle levels, while the activities guided by the instructor and supervised by the learner are for intermediate and advanced levels.
3. It is verified that the advantages of information gap operations are helpful in the classroom input and output stage. In addition, Hess (2001) presents the benefits of information gap operations. The overview of these benefits is addressed as follows in the following paragraph. Using information gap operations allows students to obtain peer feedback from one another. It also generates an atmosphere of motivation in the school that makes learners ask each other for assistance to finish the assignment. Brainstorming will make the learning method more efficient in order to obtain more information. Information gap operations will create a learning style by encouraging learners ' independence. According to Richards and Rogers (2014), however, the primary objective of teaching talking for linguistic learning is fluency, which has to use activities that require students to be in actual interaction such as information gap and other assignments.
Lawtie (2004) refers to the fact that whenever second language students can engage in a discussion that implies linguistic learning achievement. Ellis (1993) claims that communicative activities are full of communicative components such as role play, group activities and knowledge gaps that allow learners to practice how to obtain information and how to practice talking for true life sharing. Richards (2006) also pointed out that the information gap utilizes an authentic material in teaching and learning procedures that will be the same as outside the classroom. For many reasons, therefore, information gap is the best technique for second language learners; it can provide learners with a good opportunity to use the sentences they learn, it also allows learners to talk, exchange information, and interact over time, and the tasks will make the lesson more interesting and motivate the learner to speak more than their teacher (Harris, 1990). However, Nunan (1999) advises language teachers to adapt interaction operations in order to attain the objective of this research. Brown (2007) endorsed that, if in a true scenario, speaking abilities can be enhanced by exercise. Arung (2012) also claimed that, information gap operations are methods to encourage the capacity to speak.
Information gap activity technique offers several advantages as follow:a. All students are involved in the process equally and they are all moving towards a spesific purposeb. Each student has the task to finding out a certain information.c. Motivation is usually high in these activities. d. Using target language in the process of discovering information
Based on Harmer’s statement, Information gap is as a key to the enhancement of communicative purpose and the desire to communicate. According to Scrivener, by creating classroom activities that include such information gaps, we can provide activities that mimic this reason for communication, and this may be more motivating and useful to language learners than speaking without any real reason for doing so.
In line with these ideas, Nunan points out, “It has been found that smallgroup, two-way information gap tasks seem to be particularly appropriate for stimulating such language.
Harmer states, “In the classroom we will want to create the same kind of information-gap if we are to encourage real communication.”
As stated by Harmer that Information Gap is a key to the enhancement of communicative purpose and the desire to communicate. Likewise, Scrivener said that by creating classroom activities that include such information gap, we can provide activities that mimic this reason for communication, and this may be more motivating and useful for language learners than speaking without any real reason for doing so. It means that by conducting formation Gap in the classroom, the teaching of speaking will be more meaningful since we can give the opportunity to the students to use the target language because they have reason/ purpose to do so. In addition, Weir in ‘Communicative Language Testing’ said that one of he advantages of using Information Gap in classroom is to elicit highly interactive task, and as such comes much closer than most other tasks in representing real communication, it recognizes the unpredictability of communicative situations and demands an ability to generate original phrases.
Based on the citations above, the writer sees that the advantages of applying information-gap activities in the classroom are it can stimulate and motivate students in interesting teaching learning process, and also it can encourage students by real communication strategies. Those are the advantages of using information gap activity technique. There are no perfect activities in teaching English.
The disadvantages of Information Gap Activity in speaking classes -Information gap activity technique also has disadvantages. Since this activity requires group work, Jeremy states the disadvantages of group work in classroom. It is likely to be noisy. Some teachers feel that they lose control, and the whole-class feeling which has been painstakingly built up may dissipate when the class is split into smaller entities. Not all students enjoy it since they would prefer to be the focus of the teacher attention rather than working with their peers. Individuals may fall into group roles, so that some are passive whereas others may dominate. Groups can take longer to organize than pairs. From the explanation above, there are advantages and disadvantages of using information gap activity technique in speaking class. The main advantage of this activity is students are involved in the process equally and they are all moving towards a specific purpose, and then the disadvantage is the classroom situation will be noisy.
Because information gap operations have benefits, there are also disadvantages. According to Weir (1990), the use of data gap inside the classroom has some disadvantages. When colleagues work in pairs or groups and one of the respondents will regulate the process of conversation while others will reduce their speaking time. In addition, the variations in the level of skills between the learners may influence the process of communication.
Weir sees that there are some problems which might appear when information Gap used in the classroom, He stated that there will be a problem if in a pair work information gap, one of the participants dominates the interaction as his/her partner may have a more limited opportunity to demonstrate communicative potential. Similarly, if there is a large difference in proficiency between the two learners that this may influence performance.
Moreover, pair work information gap is not easy to be administered, since in one class consists of a number of pairs and each pairs cannot be paid attention at the same time, therefore noise and indiscipline such as the use of students‟ native language is difficult to be controlled.
Legutke and Thomas see that information-gap activities help learners to appreciate that they use the target language to communicate without the direct intervention of the teacher. From this citation, the writer underlines the phrase “communicate without the direct intervention of the teacher” as the unstated weakness of information-gap activity. Without direct intervention of the teacher, it means that the teacher will not be involved in such information gap activity to prevent the mistakes or errors done by the students or even to help them.
In line with this idea, Joycey points out that such group work in an information-gap activity do not always complete the learner’s ability to communicate in the target language.
The writer may infer that at least there are two disadvantages of using information-gap activity in the classroom. First, teacher’s role is passive, so that the students need to be active and independent in doing this activity. Second, information-gap activity in group work may not be sufficient to give the learners complete ability to communicate in the target language.
1.Information Gap consumes much time to do or conduct. If the teacher plans ten-minute activities with the group of five, each student has two minutes talking time. The amount of time will be less for the larger classes. Therefore, it is not easy to maximize the students to talk during the time.
2. Information Gap demands teachers to be skillful in controlling the class. The more students there is, the more difficulty controlling the class and, therefore, more chances of problems. In addition, there is, of course, a greater likelihood of excessive noise which can mask bad behavior and use of the first language.
3. The students are sometimes lazy to do the teacher's task and feel confused in saying the expressions what they want to say in the task. The students are sometimes not enthusiastic enough with the teacher's instruction because they do not like the material given and the limitation in the vocabulary items, which make the students feel confused what they want to say in asking and answering the information to their friends.