Information Gap Activities to Enhance Speaking Skills of Elementary Level Studentsâ¿¿

Speaking is considered as one of the most essential means of effective communication. Teaching English-speaking skills to elementary level students at university is especially challenging. The most demanding issue for teachers is how to assist students to apply the knowledge learned in the class to real-life situations. The biggest problem with low-level proficiency students is that they lack motivation and confidence when they speak. They are usually very silent and passive. They hesitate to answer any question or take self-initiative when needed to participate in class activities. Second, most students lack the vocabulary. Students are not able to bring their ideas and also comprehend the information well because they have very limited vocabulary and are not able to pronounce the words well.In many studies, studentsâ¿¿ speaking competences have been shown to be influenced by their exposure to the target language. Having this in mind, teachers should create and use activities that will be authentic, up-to-date, that will be fun and motivate students, so that they can actively be engaged in the learning process.One of the speaking activities that promotes communication competences is Information Gap activities. In these activities, students have to use the target vocabulary to share the information. This paper aims at examining the methodological strategies that Information Gap technique provides and its effectiveness to increase speaking competence. The paper will describe the implementation of Information Gap activities to the elementary level students and its impact to the studentsâ¿¿ speaking performance. The Information Gap techniques are activities that are designed practicing on specific items of language and short sentences. The research results revealed that the use of Information Gap activities helped students improve their speaking skills. After the implementation of these activities, students felt more confident to speak in English; they were enthusiastic in doing the activities; and their motivation for learning and using the language improved.