Brown
(2004) explains Information Transfer as follows:
The action of comprehending graphics includes the
linguistics performance of oral or written interpretation, comments, questions,
etc. This implies a process of Information Transfer from one skill to another:
in this case, from reading verbal and/or non-verbal information to
speaking/writing” (p. 210).
It can be inferred from the
definitions above that the Information Transfer technique is converting the
content of the verbal language form into the non-verbal language form and vice
versa to make the information easy to understand and convey.
There are few ways to construct
information transfer based on what type it is.
Authenticity
Firstly,
Information Transfer is an authentic task that is often used in an English
speaking environment by native speakers in the normal course of their everyday
lives. Let’s take the train timetables as an example. The railway clerk at the
enquiries office constantly transfers his own semi-diagrammatic timetable into
linguistic information for people who telephone to ask for train times. These
people also probably note down that information in a semi-schematic way rather
than in its fully linguistic form.
Communicative
Tasks
Information
Transfer activities are also communicative tasks. When customers book a flight
at the travel agent, the clerk will interpret the information on the computer
screen for them and use information transfer in communicating and offering
help.
Repetitive
Tasks
Normally,
the information presented in a diagrammatic form or semi-diagrammatic form is
frequently a concentrated collection of similar items of information, for
example, repeatedly the train time table shows us when the train will depart
from, stop at, and arrive at a limited number of places. This means that the
linguistic equivalent may well be expressed by repetition of a certain
structure. In this way, Information Transfer activities can be very appropriate
to a controlled practice stage of a lesson.
Productive
Tasks
An Information
Transfer exercise, such as an information-gap task, usually provides students
only with the bare bones of information – they must supply the additional
information, often to a partner. Thus, if it is appropriately staged,
information transfer can fit into the free production stage of a lesson. In the
example below (Fig. 1) only the bare bones of information are given to the
student. In order to present on the topic, music, they must add more information
to make sentences. In this kind of exercise students can practice their
speaking in front of the class. This is done during the productive stage of a
class that began with a reading text about music.
The Flows in Forming Information Transfer
Questions
1. The
teacher will decide what input or topic that he/she want to imply on the
students. The teacher must make sure that the input is understandable.
2. The
students will then use their language skills to decode the information given to
them. For example in the figure, they will use listening and reading skills.
3. Then
the students will process the information to make it into an output. Which
involve other skills such as speaking and writing.
4. The
information transfer must involve the changing of language skills from one to
another.
5. That
is how information is transferred. It is not necessarily be a visual type of
information, but it can also be others like audio or videos.