论文总字数：29227字

摘 要

如今在小学英语课堂中游戏教学广泛流行。相比于其他教学方法，游戏教学更加有趣，更具吸引力。但事实上，小学英语课堂中也存在着许多由游戏教学引起的低效现象。主要原因在于这样的游戏没有形成有效的信息沟。最近几年在英语教学领域，信息沟被广泛的使用，因为它能够使实现信息的有效交流，体现了交际教学法的本质。本论文会探索和呈现信息沟的发展特点，以及它在英语教学中的具体应用。同时，本论文会研究游戏教学的发展概况。最终通过探究和对比具体情境下的教学案例，研究如何在英语游戏教学中有效的融入信息沟，从而创造真正高效的英语课堂。

关键词：小学英语教学，信息沟，游戏教学，交际教学法

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. The Development of Game Teaching in Primary English Class 3

3.1 The Advantages of Designing Games in English Class 3

3.2 Some Ineffective Application of Game in English Teaching 4

4. The Application of Information Gap in English Teaching 5

4.1 The Background and Advantages of Applying Information Gap 5

4.2 Specific Application of Information Gap in Certain English Context 7

5. The Combination of Information Gap with Game Teaching 8

5.1 How to Create Information Gap in the Process of Game Teaching 8

5.2 The Principles of the Application of Information Gap in Game Teaching 9

5.2.1 Principle of Interest 9

5.2.2 Principle of Purpose 10

5.2.3 Principle of Inspiration 10

5.2.4 Principle of Communication 11

6. Conclusion 11

Works Cited 13

1. Introduction

With the thorough reform in teaching, the teaching forms are also increasingly diversified. In order to going out the predicament caused by the boring and dull classroom teaching, all kinds of educational reform and experiment have been carried out across the country, for example Happy Teaching. Under such circumstance, it highlights the value of game teaching. So game teaching is very popular among classroom teaching, especially in primary English class (Zhou Jianping, 2002:56). Games can instill fun and energy into classroom teaching; meanwhile, they can attract the children’s attention, making them actively take part in the teaching activities. Game teaching embodies the respect for children’s personality, freedom and need. But not all the games in teaching can have a good effect on children’s learning. On the contrary, they lead the language teaching into an impasse. Such games are only designed for activating classroom atmosphere. As a result, it not only unintentionally distracts the student’s attention, but also loses the meaning of communication. As we know, communication is the final target of both language learning and language teaching. It is caused by information gap, which is the distinction of mastering information between different people. The purpose of communication is to fill in the information gap between speakers (Wang Chuming, 1987:35). In recent years, information gap has been widely applied in English teaching, such as in reading and grammar teaching. This paper aims at exploring how to apply information gap in game teaching. It includes six parts. Part one is the introduction of this paper, and part two is the literature review. The third part is mainly about the development of game teaching in primary English class. It discusses the theoretical basis of game teaching, also its advantages and disadvantages. Part four is about the application of information gap in English teaching. Then part five explores the combination of information gap in game teaching. Part six is the conclusion of this paper. In this process, communicative approach, situational teaching method and Krashen’s language acquisition theory will be involved. By exploring such aspects, this paper hopes to improve English teaching and learning, so as to create an efficient class.

2. Literature Review

Makarenko, the former Soviet Union educator thought that teachers should widely apply games in teaching process, because it differs from the ordinary teaching method in that it change the student’s cognition style. By playing games, students can make full use of imagination and independently look for answers.

In English teaching, the research on games teaching is comparatively late, especially for Chinese educators. It began in the late 1990s. With the issue of New English Curriculum, the task of English curriculum began transmitted from exam-oriented education to students-oriented education, designed to inspire train the students’ interest. Fan Donfang put forward that game teaching should be designed to arouse the learners’ various senses, for example ear, eyes, hands, brains, to improve the students’ overall abilities. In essence, game teaching belongs to the situational teaching method. The Czech educator Comenius said:“all the knowledge origins from senses.” We can’t say that this sentence is true without doubt. But it embodies the essence of situational teaching method, or game teaching. Game teaching is truly designed for certain situation. And in that process, the students’ senses are aroused. Tian Li came up with the five principles of game teaching: with purpose, with feasibility, with fun, with competition, with control. Wen Qi had a preliminary study of basic model in the game teaching of primary English class, based on the requirements of New English Curriculum. This model is: warm up, lead-in by games, teaching new knowledge, consolidation by competition, the freely communicative performance. Compared with the forgoing theories of game teaching, this model has made a great progress. But when reviewing all these theories on games teaching, it can be found that none of them are involved in communicative principles, which is the essence of foreign language learning.

Information gap, also called communication, put forward by Katzman in 1974, has been widely applied in listening, speaking and reading. English scholar, Michael Swan, refers that information gap is a basic thought of contemporary language teaching. People can transmit information and communicate with each other only when there are information gaps between speakers.

Actually, the principles of information gap have many similarities with the input hypothesis and the affective filter hypothesis of Krashen’s language acquisition theory. The language acquisition theory put forward by American linguist Krashen has a profound influence on language teaching. Krashen thinks that language learning and language acquisition are two different accesses to learning the second language. He insists that language learning is conscious and formal and it’s used to assist and monitor the learning process; however, language acquisition is unconscious, natural. Learners can study actively in the real situations. Language teaching should put the language acquisition in the first place. The principles of information gap have applied the input hypothesis of Krashen’s theory. Learners acquire the language ability by contacting with those language input superior to their existing levels. As a result, learners can gradually improve their language skills by constantly absorbing language input. The game, Word Puzzle, is good example which applies the principles above.

Based on the literature review above, it’s easily found that both the game teaching and information gap have been researched thoroughly. All these provide this paper with abundant background information. The paper aims at research on how to connect these two parts together.

3. The Development of Game Teaching in Primary English Class

3.1 The Advantages of Designing Games in English Class

3.1.1 Inspiring the Students to Speak English

In the early period of English teaching, the students are usually too unconfident to speak English to varied degrees. As an interesting method, games are helpful to make student participate the whole language activities actively, giving them no pressure in the process. If the students finally make it, they will feel proud. If not, they won’t feel frustrated because it’s just games. On the contrary, the students will feel motivated, eager to succeed in the next time. For example, in the game of “passing words”, the teacher tell the topic words to the first student of every row, then the students pass the words from the front to the back, and finally make a competition as feedback. In the process of such games, every student has the opportunity to speak English and dare to do without timid thoughts (Huang Minling, 2008:101).

3.1.2 Improving the Efficiency of English Class.

The teaching time of class teaching is always limited. How to achieve the teaching procedures in limited time is the key of teaching. The primary school students are curious for interesting things and active, so game teaching can attract their attention. Consolidating the learnt knowledge in such a relaxing atmosphere, students can reach the goals with half time. For example, after students have learned some fruit vocabulary like apple, lemon and peach, the teacher can lead them do a “guessing game” to consolidate these new words. The teacher can take out a card, and then let students guess which fruit it is. By this way, the children can concentrate on the process of consolidation efficiently.

3.1.3 Developing the Overall Abilities of Students.

By the varied games, students can be attracted to the language activities directly; meanwhile, their capacities of observation, memory and thinking can be improved (Huang Mingling, 2008:102). For example, in the game of “Irrelevant Answer”, the teacher can firstly present some sentences: Is this a desk? Can I open the door? Then the teacher can give an answer: no, it’s not. The students need to find the sentence which can’t respond to the given answer and read the sentence aloud. After several practice in this way, the students’ listening ability and ability to respond can be improved.

3.2 Some Ineffective Application of Game in English Teaching

3.2.1 Application of Games Irrelevant to Teaching

In essence, applying the games in teaching activities can arouse students’ interest in English learning. But in the real teaching situations, some teachers misunderstand the role of games in teaching activities. Some games are designed and conducted just for fun, irrelevant to the teaching objectives. For instance, in order to consolidate the word learnt in the last class, the young teacher designs a game called “in your hand”. The rules of this game are regulated as this: the teacher gives the first student a piece of paper with the old words on it, then orders the students to pass the paper; when the teacher speak “stop”, the student who have the paper in hand should read the words on it. It is seemed that the students getting the paper have consolidated the old words. However, most of them can’t get the chances to speak. It is obviously that this game design doesn’t have much relationship with the teaching content. So such games are insignificant to a large extent.

3.2.2 Application of Games without Communicative Meaning

Different designs of game are adopted in different teaching situations and objectives. But all the games should embody the significance of communication, because language is a communicative tool. There exists a common phenomenon that teachers always design the games ignoring the necessary communication. When learning the sentence pattern“Do you like…” some teachers will give students several words like apple, banana, and oranges one by one and then the students need to quickly use these words to practice sentence patterns. As a result, students only practice the sentence patterns in the given situation. Gradually, the children will lose interest. By contrast, this game can be changed like this: ask every student to draw a fruit on the paper and then fold it, then they should exchange this paper with each other among a small group; when one student opens the paper, and says :“Do you like…”, the correspondent students should stand up and say:“Yes, I like it.”This design of games combines with the communicative principles. By this way, the students can keep long attention on the learning process.

4. The Application of Information Gap in English Teaching

4.1 The Background and Advantages of Applying Information Gap

Information gap is the distinction of mastering information between different people, which is put forward by Katzman in 1974. Caused by the existence of information gap, a series of language activities occur for keeping a balance of information. Information gap is the original impetus of communication (Yao Guofen, 2007:65). The following dialogue is a typical example of information gap:

A: Look at my family photos.

B: Is this your mother? She is so pretty.

A: Yes, thank you.

B: What does your mother do?

A: She is a nurse.

Among this dialogue, the speaker B doesn’t know what speaker A’s mother does, so he or she produced the motivation of asking. In other words, there exists information gap between A and B. By communication, these two speakers reach to a balance of information. Communications in the real situations are all based on the information gap. The existence of information is absolute and eternal, while the balance of information gap is relative and temporary.

The main characteristic of information gap is its unpredictability. According to the “i 1” hypothesis, the activities of information gap can design specific communicative activities suitable for students, regardless of the students’ various learning purposes and learning need. But no matter what kinds of tasks and activities, they should all embody the information gap. “The input and output of information are very compact, the receivers of information can’t foresee the information of transmitters, so they need to quickly judge and understand the information received then response to the transmitters in a short time.” (Li Guanyi, 1995：26) For example, when a new teacher goes into the classroom, and says: “I’m your new English teacher.” When the students begin communicating with this new teacher, they will naturally blurt out, “where is our teacher Wang?” Then the new teacher won’t directly give the reason, but says that she really has some important work to do. And the students will once again ask what the important work is. In the following process of communication, this teacher needs to produce such information gap constantly, to arouse the students’ curiosity and learning motivation at the most. By making the communication and transmission go on without trouble, students’ oral English can be well trained and improved. As for the advantages of applying information gap, it can be argued from two aspects as follows:

4.1.1 To arouse students’ motivation of learning.

Positive learning attitude and strong learning motives plays an important role in English learning. English exists as a tool of communication, so the ultimate goal of learning is to acquire varieties of information. The acquisition of information can only be achieved by the transmission and communication of information. Information gap is the basis and motives of communication. So the existence of information gap is the internal motivation of learning when people try to acquire information (Wang Haifeng, 2005: 106).

4.1.2 To develop student’s language competency

One of the challenges for the language teachers is to inspire the students to use more target language. Those students who are very confident usually participate in such activities actively, while those who have a comparatively poor language basis usually hesitate when they express themselves. Another relative phenomenon also deserves the teachers’ attention (Mai Xiaoping, 2008:291). Although the students are trying to use the target language to communicate, this process is usually stirred by the teachers’ questioning. Reflecting from the phenomenon above, we can conclude that the teachers should try their best to promote the students’ language output. So efficiently providing the students with more opportunities to practice oral English which are communicative is the challenge English teachers will face. Trying to use the oral practice with information gap is an effective solution to that problem. In the language activities with information gap, every participator has the specific information to share with others, then to solve certain problems or to gather information. (Neuamp;Reeser, 1997)

4.2 Specific Application of Information Gap in Certain English Context

The principles o information gap can be applied in the contents and activities of English teaching. Primary English teachers can make the students produce the need and motivation of communication by creating contexts and topics which have information gap. But in real English teaching process, some teachers only design the repeated language drills in order to consolidate sentence patterns. Both the teachers and the students master the same information, without the existence of the information gap. So such language learning can’t be the real language communication in the true sense. For example, the teacher pointed to the desk in the picture, and asked: “What’s this?”

Such drills lack of information gap. If there is too much train like this, it will lead in the students’ communicative problems in the real situations. Compared with the last example, I will introduce a quietly typical example of application. When teaching “How Much is it?” many teachers will make use of the situation of buying clothes. I once make students have such dialogue (Here I will present a virtual clothes store, with all kinds of clothes):

A：Can I help you?

B：Let me have a look. I want a sweater.

A：Look at this one, it’s pretty.

B: Mmm, I don’t like green．I like pink. That one is pretty. (Try it on)

A: What about this one?

B: It fits me well. How much is it?

A: It’s 99yuan

B: Oh, it’s too expensive.

Under such situation, students are not solely drilling the sentence pattern, but are going shopping. This whole dialogue is caused by information gap between the buyer and the seller. As a result, students can naturally mastered how to use “how much is it?” in the real situations.

5. The Combination of Information Gap with Game Teaching

5.1 How to Create Information Gap in the Process of Game Teaching

Both communicative principles and interest are the indispensable elements of learning a foreign language. From what have been discussed above, we can find information gap leads to communication, while game teaching arouses learners’ interest. So exploring how to apply information gap to the activities of game teaching is beneficial to English learning and teaching in primary schools. In order to achieve this goal, this paper will focus on the specific examples.

After the students learned the new words such as big, small and short, the teachers encourage the students to use the new words. One of the teacher’s methods is presented as follows. He presented the exaggerated head portrait of famous star on the comic books, and then he covered the mouth of the star and said: “Look, he is so funny. Guess, he has a…?” The students were eager to say: “Let me try.” Such game design with information gap make students curious about these pictures and arouse the students’ interest. Compared with this method, another teacher’s method is overshadowed. He directly invited one student and said: “Look, this is…He has…” The students answered this question without much interest, although the latter game is also designed to attract the students’ attention. By comparison, the former one drills the learnt sentence patterns unconsciously, and has a good effect. While the latter one is just a mechanical training, it makes the students unwilling to practice the new words. Obviously, the former one is more popular among students.

In the process of training spoken English, many teachers will lead the students to do a role play activity. They will give students one topic and several sentence patterns. Such design of game is suitable for older students, because they have the knowledge basis to some degree, and they are comparatively active. As for the primary school students, such design is too extended to practice their oral English. The following game named “guessing game” can be a good example in training oral English. The teacher randomly chooses one student and orders him to write a random word on the paper, and fold this paper. By constantly asking students questions, the other students can shorten the range step by step until they guess the right word. In this process, the students are eager to speak English because they are curious about any information about that word. Such design can make students actively communicate with others.

5.2 The Principles of the Application of Information Gap in Game Teaching

5.2.1 Principle of Interest

Students’ interest is the potential of teaching English. The activities of game teaching aim to arouse the students’ interest. If the teachers can consciously create some information gaps in the design of game teaching with varied methods, it will make the students aspire for acquiring information balance, and increase the interest of game through information gap. So in the teaching process, we should make full use of varied teaching methods to create information gap actively and increase fun of games. For example, in the game designed to review vocabulary, the teacher can prepare two sets of pictures with the same words on them. By guessing “what is it?”On the picture which is cut off, the information gap can be created. Through the game of “look and guess”, the students will actively participate in the process of observing, thinking and concluding, avoiding the boring and mechanical features of vocabulary review.

5.2.2 Principle of Purpose

Information gap is the original motivation of language communication and language activity. It decides that the communication of human is eternal and diversified. If we can create reasonable information gap, making the designed games compatible with the teaching objectives, the effectiveness of games can really be released. When teaching the students new vocabulary, the teacher can adopt some games to make students guess, for example, “twenty questions”. In this game, students can ask questions, and gradually rule out the irrelative information, finally get the right answers. The game “I spy…” is also popular among students. The common characteristics of such games are the existence of information, which can stimulate the students’ thinking and server for the teaching objectives.

5.2.3 Principle of Inspiration

Designing games in teaching process aims to learn and consolidate the English knowledge, and activate learning atmosphere. But what should be highlighted are the cultivation of students’ intelligence and the development of their abilities. The ancient educator Zhang Zai once said: “The premise of learning is to doubt.” Information gap can help the teachers design question. Creating the information gap with inspiration has varied influence on the student’s development. On the one hand, it can arouse the students’ interest, to make them concentrate on the teaching activities. On the other hand, it inspires the students to think actively, to develop the students’ ability of thinking. For example, in order to help the students master how to use simple future tense, the teacher can design a game of “Look and Guess”. By presenting the pictures of people’s activities, for instance, a man standing at the school gate, the teacher can create an information gap: what is he doing to do? By asking students what he is going to do, students can actively imagine, apply and express their views. Under the inspiration of such information, students can effectively transfer the old knowledge and consolidate the new parts.

5.2.4 Principle of Communication

As what the famous writer George Bernard Shaw once said , You have an apple, and I have an apple; Exchange, everyone get an apple; You have a thought, and I have an idea; Exchange, everyone respectively obtained two kinds of thoughts. (Ma Zuofang, 2011:93) The New English Curriculum in Primary school advocates the learning method to experience, practice and communicates. So the design of game teaching should embody the communicative feedback to all students. “Do a survey” is a common game in English class; however, analyzed from the true teaching conditions, this game is always designed to communicate among groups, or to invite one student to report to the whole class. Such design doesn’t embody the principle of communication. Compared with this design, the teachers can make a change based on the former game. By the game of “Today I’m a spy”, every group chooses one representative to report their own group’s conditions to the other groups. At the same time, the other groups give their counterparts. Through such changes, the significance of game teaching can be improved by creating an information gap.

6. Conclusion

Concluded from what have been discussed above, this paper has explored the topic from the aspects of game teaching and information. And finally this paper tries to find out the specific solutions to the combination of information gap in game teaching. There are still some problems to be solved, for example: the realistic influence of such combination on students. In the process of language teaching, whether the information gap exists or not is an important symbol to judge if teachers regard English as a communicative tool. It is also one of the symbols to judge if students are interested in the English class. The students of primary school are lively, and eager to express themselves. Varied game teachings combined with the design of information gap are popular among the primary students. At the same time, such activities directly influence the students’ interest in learning English. It is also beneficial for the students to form the correct learning method and good learning habits. The existence of information gap makes the communicative activities in games more accessible to authentic situation.

Works Cited

[1] Krashen. S. D. Relevance: The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications. Longman, 1985

[2] Neu, H., and T. Reeser. Relevance: Information Gap Activities for Beginning French Classes. Boston: Heinle, 1997

[3] Seain. M. Relevance: Three functionsof output in second language learning. Oxford University Press, 1985

[4] 陈飞瑜. 《交流信息，分享幸福》. 百花园地，2013（4）:144-145.

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