The Effectiveness of Information Gap Activities for Improving Listening Comprehension of Seventh Grade Students

Abstract

This research aimed to determine the effectiveness of Information Gap Activities (IGA) for improving students' listening comprehension of seventh grade at SMP Wahidiyah Kediri in the academic year 2025/2026. Information Gap Activity is a communicative learning technique that encourages students to exchange missing information in order to complete a task. This technique requires students to listen carefully, collaborate with their peers, and actively participate in the learning process. The researcher used a quantitative approach with a one-group pretest-posttest design. Class VII B served as the experimental class, consisting of 33 students. The pre-test was administered before the treatment, and the post-test was administered after the treatment. The treatment was conducted in six meetings using Information Gap Activities with descriptive texts about places entitled My School, My Hometown, Malioboro, Monas, Honolulu, and Bandar Lampung City. The students' listening comprehension was assessed using a scoring rubric adapted from Shockingawful (iRubric, 2017), which consisted of four criteria: ability to focus, general understanding, listening for specific information, and accuracy of answer. The data were analyzed using a paired sample t-test. The mean score of the pre-test was 42.05 (out of 100), and the mean score of the post-test was 85.42 (out of 100), indicating an improvement of 43.37 points. The t-test result was 5.53, and the t-table value was 2.037 (t-test > t-table, 5.53 > 2.037). It means that the alternative hypothesis (Hₐ) was accepted and the null hypothesis (H₀) was rejected. This result indicated that the use of Information Gap Activities had a significant effect on students' listening comprehension.