> Information gap principle and its use to create better rapport between the speaker and the listener.

Information gap principle and its use to create better rapport between the speaker and the listener.

Posted on Friday, 23 November 2012 | No Comments


An information gap is a situation in which there is a communication between two or more people and where information is known to only some of the people present. Early adopters of technology in the field of education used to phrase ‘information gap’ to describe families who could afford a computer at home in contrast to those who could not.

The ‘information gap principle’ is a method of communication development in a laboratory class by the teacher not predominantly communicating with any student directly. Information gap principle is a variation of a surprised activity called as information gap. Language students should be involved in as many situations as possible where one of them has some information and the other doesn’t have. But one has to get it from the other who does have it to breach the information gap between the participating students in the activity based classrooms.


Again by the information gap, the person who exchanges something that the other doesn’t know like the teacher to student question ‘what is the colour of your dress?’, usually this question doesn’t involve any information gap as the teacher and the student know the same information while the friend to friend question ‘where are you going for lunch?’ does involve an information gap because the asking person presumably does not know the answer. This presence and absence of information is called as information gap principle. Therefore to deal with the principle in practice there is necessity of pair practice on variety of different language skill drills. To make the students practice the information gap principle, to encourage them to find whatever information that they do not have or possess with them they should interact between each other to improve their communication skills in the language.

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