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Date Posted: 20:58:21 04/10/07 Tue
Author: Andréa Faria
Subject: Re: Task One Group Two
In reply to: Adriana 's message, "Task One Group Two" on 06:06:20 04/08/07 Sun

Three good reasons for using the deductive approach

Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) are constantly faced with the urge to make choices among a variety of approaches based on competing theories. This can be a problem, for example, when introducing new language items in class. There are two basic ways of doing this: deductively or inductively. Briefly speaking, deductive presentations involve giving students rules and explanations and leading them to apply the new concepts, whereas in inductive presentations learners infer rules or generalizations from samples of the language they explored or manipulated. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), based on constructivist principles, has tended towards the inductive approach, especially because it is said to foster “discovery learning” and encourage learners to reflect upon what they are exposed to. The premise is that we have better chances of retaining information we discover by ourselves than information transmitted by others. With the popularity of CLT, the deductive approach, generally associated with teacher-centered methodologies, has lost much of its prestige. However, despite claims against it, there are at least three good reasons for not discarding deductive procedures from our classrooms, even in those that follow CLT ideas. I will try to present these reasons and support them with arguments from well-known researchers in the area.
First of all, an important reason for not eliminating the deductive approach is that students’ styles vary. Though some learners like the challenge of solving language problems and discovering patterns and regularities in the input they manipulate, many others, especially adults, due to past experiences or a more analytical style, prefer to be given explicit rules so that they can apply them. Furthermore, as Thornbury points out in his book "How to teach grammar", surveys have shown that most learners tend to prefer deductive presentations to inductive ones (55). Although we should not turn to this resource simply because students feel more comfortable with it, ignoring students learning styles is not only counter-productive, but also demotivating. In her article "Teaching grammar", Diane Larsen-Freeman states that, “Usually students request rules and report that they find them helpful. Moreover, stating a rule explicitly can often bring about linguistic insights in a more efficacious manner” (124).
Secondly, the deductive approach can be more efficient than the inductive to introduce complex grammar items. Scott Thornbury argues that there is a high risk of coming up with wrong rules when using the inductive approach to analyze intricate structure points, especially if the testing of hypotheses is insufficient. He states that certain language notions are better “given” than “learned”, citing modality and aspect as areas that resist easy rule formulation (55).
Finally, deductive presentations are considerably more time-saving. In language classes, we should carefully balance the amount of time to present and practise new items. Reducing the amount of time needed in the presentation stage means more time left for practice and production. Apart from this, deductive strategies are less demanding on the teacher than inductive ones, which require careful selection and organization of intelligible data, so that students can formulate accurate rules. Deductive procedures take less preparation time and fewer resources(Thornbury, 55). Teachers can, for instance,comment on examples from students’ own production and give them the opportunity to personalize the rules in order to make them more easily remembered.
As we can see, there is still room for the deductive approach in EFL classrooms. Banishing it altogether would mean disregarding students’ different learning styles and preferences, being inefficient in presenting convoluted linguistic items and running the risk of spending more time in the preparation and presentation stages instead of giving students more time to practise what they are learning. All in all, deductive teaching should be seen as a useful tool to be employed by the teacher when s/he feels it is more adequate or efficient than the inductive approach. If one of our roles as teachers is to act as facilitators of our students’ learning process, we should avoid discarding resources that are still valuable, be they in fashion or not. On the whole, analyzing who, what and why we are teaching is an essential starting point before any choice for a given methodology or approach is made.

Works Cited

Thornbury, Scott. How to teach grammar. London: Longman/Pearson Education Limited, 1999: 1-68

Larsen-Freeman, Diane. “Teaching grammar.” Teaching English as a second or foreign language. Boston : Heinle & Heinle, 1991: 251-266.


Note to Fran and Clarissa:
I couldn't put the names of the books in italics. I had to use inverted commas in the text to show they are names of books, although I know this is not the right way to do it. The format of the text on the "page" is also strange. I believe these are restrictions of this tool.

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