26 Вопрос

Many people have contrasted two approaches (called, rather unhelpfully, deductive and inductive) for introducing students to specific aspects of language.

The deductive approach

In a deductive approach, students are given explanations or grammar rules, for example, and then, based on these explanations or rules, they make phrases and sentences using the new language.

In the following example, elementary students are going to focus on the present continuous tense.

The teacher starts by showing them pictures of people doing certain actions (painting a house, fixing the roof, cutting the grass, etc). He or she then models a sentence about one of the pictures ('He's painting the house') before using a series of devices to draw the students' attention to the grammar of the present continuous ('Listen ... he's ... he's ... he is ... he is [ using a gesture, perhaps fingers or hands coming together to show 'he' and 'is' joined together to make the contracted form] ... he's ... he's ... painting ... listen ... paint... ing... paint... ing ... he's painting the house'). Students then repeat the sentence, before moving on to the next one ('He's fixing the roof), where the teacher once again models the sentence, and again draws the students' attention to the construction of the present continuous by isolating parts of it ('he's', 'fixing'). The students then repeat the second sentence. The teacher now cues the students with a prompt ('paint') and the students have to say 'He's painting the house', or 'fix' and they say 'He's fixing the roof. They then use what they are learning to make sentences about the other pictures, and as they do so, the teacher corrects where necessary (see pages 97-98).

It can be seen that this explain and practise approach to teaching aspects of the language system looks very much like a straight arrows sequence (see page 54) in which the order of elements is engage -> study -> activate. It suits some students and language points very well. We will see an example of this kind of procedure on page 88.

The inductive approach

In a so-called inductive approach, things happen the other way round. In other words, instead of going from the rules to the examples, students see examples of language and try to work out the rules. Thus, for example, after students have read a text, we might ask them to find examples of different past tenses and say how and why they are used. This boomerang-type lesson (where the elements occur in the sequence engage -> activate ->study) is especially appropriate where language study arises out of skills work on reading and listening texts.

If we want students to understand how speakers in informal conversation use certain phrases as delaying tactics (or to buy 'thinking' time) we might - after letting them listen and respond to someone speaking spontaneously - get them to listen again, but this time reading a transcript of what is being said. The task we give them is to find language used for buying time - hoping that they will identify phrases like 'you know', T mean', 'yeah', 'mmm', etc.

If we want students to understand how certain words collocate (see page 75), we can, if we want, tell them about the words and their collocations. That is what we would do in an explain and practise sequence. But in an inductive approach we prefer the students to find this information out. If we are teaching 'body language', therefore, instead of tell­ing students which verbs like 'wave', 'clench', 'wag', etc collocate with which nouns such as 'hand', 'arm', 'teeth', 'fist', etc, we can send them to monolingual learners' dictionaries (MLDs) or computer corpuses to see if they can work it out for themselves. Such discovery activities ask students to do the work rather than having everything handed to them on a plate by the teacher or a grammar/vocabulary book.

Discovery activities suit some students very well; they enjoy working things out. Many people think that the language they understand in this way is more powerfully learnt (because they had to make some cognitive effort as they uncovered its patterns) than it would have been if they were told the grammar rules first and didn't have to make such an effort. However, not all students feel comfortable with this approach and would still prefer to be 'spoon-fed'. A lot will depend on their level. It is generally easier for more advanced students to analyse language using discovery procedures than it is for complete begin­ners. The boomerang sequence is often more appropriate with students who already have a certain amount of language available to them for the first activation stage than it is with students who can say very little. Discovery activities are especially useful when students are looking at the construction of specific language for the second or third time. When we ask them to look at the use of different past tenses in a story and to work out how they are used and why, we assume that they 'know' the individual tenses. The detective work they are doing now is intended to expand their knowledge and revise things they are already familiar with.