

Dimitris Primalis
Dimitris Primalis




What exactly are information gap activities?

Why try them in class?

Because they:
2. require collaboration through pair or groupwork
4. encourage creativity by stimulating students’ imagination



1. Split viewing/listening for speaking/writing activity










7 thoughts on “Guest post by Dimitris Primalis (@dprimalis) – Information gap tasks with the aid of technology – Part 1

  1. Dear Dimitris,

    Thank you so much for sharing your guest post on my blog with such great activities. I love activities that incorporate all skills! I believe it is essential that activities work on more than one skill – all of them is ideal!

    I am definitely going to try this with my students, with the clip from Rebecca. Thank you so much!

  2. Thank you Dimitris and Vicky for this. I agree, meaningful activities do tend to enhance motivation and if students are able to collaborate effectively in their L2 language then these kinds of activities become very engaging and stimulate creativity.

    Regarding dividing students into learner types, I suppose in order to enable students to experience the activity from both perspectives and perhaps provide a richer experience, this activity could be repeated with a second short video and the groups swapped around.

    And for those who don’t have an IWB, mobile devices could be used with headphones, which would mean students could remain in the room, but divided into the two groups. Might aid the flow of the activity and alleviate the disruption which can arise when students leave and enter the classroom. Takes me back to lessons where I’ve done something similar myself 🙂

    Thanks for the post


  3. Thoroughly enjoyed it Dimitris and Vicky! And thank you for the video suggestion as well. Looks interesting. My question is, is there a way to ensure that students will not cheat by doing the other team’s task if we use the flipped classroom approach?

    1. @ Dina Dobrou Thank you for your kind words! Through settings allow or block access to group members accordingly. The ICT dept or the system administrator will help you. If there is no wiki or LMS but you still use technology with your students, upload the mute video and the audio version as videos on you tube (separately) and email your students the url with instructions to take notes. If they do not know that it is the same story and that in the next stage they will have to exchange information, they are highly unlikely to compare notes or exchange links.

  4. Great ideas. I think it might be easily adaptable to use with my mixed-levels group too. Thanks so much for sharing and I am looking forward to the second part of it. 🙂

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