USING TWO - WAY INFORMATION – GAP TASKS TO ENCOURAGE EQUAL PARTICIPATION FROM THE STUDENTS IN GROUP WORK ACTIVITIES IN AN EFL CLASS AT THE UNETI HA NOI

English is taught throughout the world, by all sorts of teachers to all sorts of learners. Schools and classrooms differ greatly in their wealth, size and their provision of equipment. But whatever the conditions in which they are working, how to teach English the most communicatively and effectively seems to have been a vital issue for many English language teachers to settle. Thus, there has currently been a high emphasis on the practice of Communicative Approach in Language Teaching the world over in general and particularly in Vietnam where English is taught as a foreign language (EFL). This teaching approach highlights the importance of Learner – Centered classrooms where teachers’ talking time is minimized and students’ talking time is increased to the utmost. The ideal class size for this is ten to fifteen students per each, “more or less homogeneous in terms of proficiency” (Richards and Renandya, 2002, p.49). Disappointingly, the majority of real life EFL classes are large – sized and mixed ability ones, with over thirty, forty or even fifty students. The high number of students in each class and the differences in their levels make it difficult for every student to have a chance to practice English. Teachers, as a result, have recourse to pair and group work for the situation remedy. However, they are not always successful in conducting effective group work which, according to Penny Ur (1991, p.120), means “the discussion is not dominated by a minority of talkative participants: all get a chance to speak, and contributions are fairly evenly distributed.” Quite a few teachers claim that they fail to generate even levels of participation among students in group work activities. This kind of failure is also experienced by the researcher herself and her colleagues, the English teachers the UNETI. All of the teachers have excitedly used group work activities in their speaking classes in the hope of increasing students’ talking time and giving everyone of them equal chance to talk and participate. Much to the teachers’ disappointment, though the total talking time of all the students in the class is increased, the level of contribution of each group member is uneven. As indicated in the findings of the researcher’s previous study, “A Research On Students’ Participation In Group Work Activities In Efl Classes at the UNETI” (see Appendix 1), during group work activities, some students were too talkative while some others were too inactive; they said nothing. The main reasons for the uneven level of students’ participation were found to be the following factors: students’ language ability, students’ personalities and learning styles, students’ interest in the task and topic, ways of grouping, and most important, the absence of information – gap tasks in group work activities. Although there have been suggestions about the effect of two – way information – gap tasks on the even levels of participation of students in group work, there seem to be very few direct studies into the issue. And not many teachers are fully aware of the importance and usefulness of information – gap tasks so the successful implementation of group work is still hard to achieve. Therefore, this research was to examine the possibility that two – way information – gap tasks would encourage equal participation from the students in group work activities in an EFL class. It was also hoped that the result of this study would help to confirm teachers’ belief in the value of Group work and Communicative Language Teaching and more and more teachers would use Group work with Two – way information – gap tasks to facilitate students’ learning. For the above – mentioned reasons, the aim of this bottom – up research was to answer the following question: “Will two – way information gap tasks encourage equal participation from the students in group work activities in an EFL class ?”