Information Gap Activities: A Standards-Based Strategy for Promoting Oral Proficiency in a Thematic Context

This article demonstrates how the sustained use of standards-driven information gap activities (IGAs) supports and enhances the development of speaking skills. In the first section, we define the IGA. We then discuss recent research showing how IGAs promote focused student-student interactions. In the third section we provide a blueprint for implementing the IGA in a standards-based thematic context. We conclude with content-based models from a thematic unit on Argentina that are appropriate for both secondary and post-secondary classrooms