發(fā)布時間：2016-05-10 15:25

Chapter 1 Introduction 

1.1 Background of the Study 
For  the  sake  of  the  adaption  to  the  rapid  development  of  vocational  education and of the improvement of the teaching quality of the English language in vocational colleges,  vocational  college  English  teaching  is  oriented  to  cultivate  students’ application  capacity  of  practical  English  and  to  highlight  the  practicability  and pertinence of the teaching material, as indicated in the Fundamental Requirements for English Course Teaching in Vocational Colleges issued by the Ministry of Education in October, 2000. To improve students’ overall English communicative competence, the oral English teaching is a key part. However, things so far in vocational English teaching  are  not  going  well.  There  are  lots  of  reasons  that  can  account  for  this. Generally  speaking,  for  one  thing,  vocational  college  students  have  relatively  low English proficiency and they lack interest in learning English. Moreover, back to their primary  and  middle  school  education,  oral  English  teaching  does  not  receive  due attention  throughout  the  whole  process.  For  the  other,  nowadays  in  most  vocational college English classrooms, it is the teaching of language forms, rather than practical application of the language that still dominates the English class. This directly results in the phenomenon that students refuse to open their mouth to speak English and to actively  get  themselves  involved  in  class  activities.  Therefore,  it  remains  an  urgent and significant task to improve the oral English teaching quality in vocational college English classes. 
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1.2 Purpose and Significance 
Taking two classes of non-English major students who entered Shandong Yingcai University  in  2012  as  participants,  two  purposes  are  to  be  achieved  throughout  this empirical  study.  Theoretically,  it  aims  to  enrich  those  studies  by  incorporating  the Information  Gap  principle  into  vocational  college  English  teaching.  Practically, feasibility  and  validity  of  the  study  on  the  effectiveness  that  Information  Gap  tasks have on the improvement of vocational college students’ oral English competence are going to be proved. Andenlightenment is hoped to be drawn at the end of the study for English teachers to better achieve their teaching objectives. In  the  21st  century,  as  the  information  society  is  booming  and  business communications  among  the  global  countries  are  developing  rapidly,  an  increasingly great demand of people who have a good command of a foreign language burst out. English, then, as the lingua franca, particularly stands out in international exchanges. And  among  the  five  basic  skills  that  the  English  language  learners  have  to  acquire, oral English skill plays an especially significant role in various activities, such as job interviews, negotiations with foreign trades, foreign visits, and cultural exchanges, etc. Therefore,  English  learning,  especially  oral  English  learning,  has  become  a  much more urgent and necessary task than ever before. 
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Chapter 2 Literature Review 

2.1 Information and the Information Gap
For starters, the word “information” has to be made clear first by definition for the  purpose  of  a  better  understanding  of  the  information  gap  principle,.  The  word “information” enjoys a quite long history. As early as over 2000 years ago, in the West Han  Dynasty,  the  word  has  appeared  and  referred  to  news  or  message  as  a  daily expression.  But  with  times  going  on,  the  word  “information”  developed  into  a technical term in information theory. Its emergence can be dated back to an article in title  of  Transmission  of  Information  by  R.  V.  Hartely.  He  defined  that  information referred  to  those  that  contains  new  content  and  new  knowledge.  Later  on,  various definitions  of  information  sprang  up.  In  1948,  Dr.  C.  E.  Shannon  came  up  with  a mathematical  definition  in  A  Mathematical  Theory  of  Communication  that information  is  to  eliminate  randomness  and  uncertainty  and  he  also  brought  up  the concept  of  the  amount  of  information  and  the  computing  method  of  information entropy,  laying  a  foundation  for  the  information  theory.  Pro.  Norbert  Wiener,  in  the book of Cybernetics: on Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, proposed  that  information  is  a  term  for  the  content  exchanged  with  the  outer  world when people are adapting to and controlling the outer world. Besides, Ashby, a British scholar, and the Italian scholar G. Longo also published their views and thoughts on information respectively in 1956 and 1975. From the above we can see that different scholars hold different views on the definition of information. When it comes down to the social communicative activities, the above understandings of information are far from enough. The word “information” must hold some meanings or it should be the carrier of meanings. To put it simply, information is the part of a message and this part carries meaning. 
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2.2 Theoretical Basis of Information Gap Task 
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) enjoys a quite long history which can be dated back to the late 1960s (Richards and Rogers, 1986). At that time, the audio-lingual and Grammar-translation method dominated the field of language teaching and gradually educators and linguists grew dissatisfied with such method.  And their dissatisfaction hastened the occurrence of Communicative Language Teaching. Running contrary to the emphasis on grammar and vocabulary of the audio-lingual and grammar-translation method, the Communicative Language Teaching approach gives much importance to language functions. And the communicative activities in which real language in daily life situation is used are more often stressed (Xie Jiangwei, 2001). A governing principle is that students can be directed to appropriately apply these language forms to various contexts for varied purposes. Its core belief about language teaching is to teach students how to use the language to achieve certain language goals, rather than teach them sets of grammatical rules and fragmentary words usages. (Liu Dan, 2012: 74) Lots of researchers have contributed much to the development of CLT (Brumfit & Johnson, 1979; Nunan, 1989; Yalden, 1983; Richards & Rodgers, 1986). A common belief held by those researchers is that students are involved in real or nearly realistic CLT activities, and these activities put less stress on the accuracy of the language. Harmer separated the communicative activities from non-communicative activities and he shows the differences in the following table. 
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Chapter 3 Methodology ....21 
3.1 Questions.......21 
3.2 Participants....21 
3.3 Instruments....22 
3.3.1 Questionnaire ....23 
3.3.2 Interview ....23 
3.3.3 Test ......24 
3.4 Procedures, Data Collection and Analysis .....25 
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion..........26 
4.1 Results and Discussion of the Questionnaires ......26 
4.2 Results and Discussions of Pre-test and Post-test........30 
4.3 Results and Discussions of Interviews....33 
Chapter 5 Conclusion........35 
5.1 Major Findings.....35 
5.2 Implications..........36 
5.3 Limitations of the Present Research .......40 
5.4 Suggestions for Further Research ....41

Chapter 4 Results and Discussion 

4.1 Results and Discussion of the Questionnaires 

In order that the results could be compared distinctively and clearly, the researcher converted the original data of the questionnaires to percentage with the decimal points eliminated. The following Table 4.1 demonstrates the results clearly.The above data show clearly the diverse changes of the participants’ attitude towards spoken English class, their enthusiasm in participating in class learning and their spoken English performance. For a better comprehension of these changes, the researcher chose several typical items for the following further analysis. According to the above figures, item 1&2 are about participants’ motivation to learn spoken English. In general, in higher vocational college students’ oral English learning, learning motivation acts a crucial part. Good learning motivation brings about positive result on oral English learning. With such a learning motivation, students will certainly develop persistent interest and will willingly devote time and energy to the learning goal attainment. The data shown above have obviously demonstrated that the experimental group relatively enjoys better learning motivation than the control group. In the experimental group, 91% of the participants claim that they learn spoken English to actually apply it in the future. Yet in the control group, 75% of the participants show a consensus that they learn oral English just to pass the CET-4 oral test. It is quite clear that the motivation of passing exams can not last long and participants with such motivation, therefore, lack persistent passion in improving their oral English competence. The above analysis illustrates the great help that information-gap tasks brings to the establishment of participants’ long-term learning motivation in the Experimental Class and will help to motivate their interests in spoken English learning. 

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Conclusion 

The  present  study  has  focused  first  on  the  effectiveness  of  implementing information gap principle to teaching spoken English in vocational colleges and then aims  to  draw  some  inspirations  in  the  end  to  facilitate  English  teachers  to  better achieve  their  teaching  objectives.  Up  to  now,  the  research  goals  have  been satisfactorily achieved, which will be illustrated in the present chapter. Besides, this chapter also gives elaborations on the limitations of the present study. And for better research in the future, suggestions will also be given. By  means  of  an  empirical  study,  the  researcher  has  analyzed  the  results  of  the questionnaires, interviews, tests and classroom observations and made corresponding discussions  in  the  previous  chapter.  The  detailed  analysis  illustrates  that  contrary  to the traditional teaching methods, oral English teaching with the aid of information gap principle could produce obvious effectiveness 
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