This week s lesson is designed to help you to take better advantage of your Bangkok Post . Since our newspaper has at least 150 stories each day, it seems silly to continually design lessons in which the students all focus on a single story. Students appreciate a bit of variety and that is what this lesson will give them. But there is a also a second benefit from the activity I have designed. It will introduce one of my favourite methods of organising a reading class.
Group work especially in a large class has one very well-known weakness.
Once an assignment is given to the typical six-person group, two people work energetically, two others daydream as the fifth member sleeps. Since the group must generally turn in a single assignment, there is not much incentive for everyone to participate. Information gap occurs when each member of a group is responsible for different information in this case, a different story. Since each member has information unknown to the others, he or she must participate for the activity to succeed. Information gap lessons usually begin with students in groups.