The advantages of encouraging learners to work rules out for themselves:

• Rules learners discover for themselves are more likely to fit their existing mental

structures than rules they have been presented with. This in turn will make the rules

more meaningful, memorable, and serviceable.

• The mental effort involved ensures a greater degree of cognitive depth which, again,

ensures greater memorability.

• Students are more actively involved in the learning process, rather than being simply

passive recipients: they are therefore likely to be more attentive and more motivated.

• It is an approach which favours pattern-recognition and problem-solving abilities

which suggests that it is particularly suitable for learners who like this kind of

challenge.

• If the problem-solving is done collaboratively, and in the target language, learners get

the opportunity for extra language practice.

• Working things out for themselves prepares students for greater self-reliance and is

therefore conducive to learner autonomy.

The disadvantages of an inductive approach include:

o The time and energy spent in working out rules may mislead students into believing that rules are the objective of language learning, rather than a means.

o The time taken to work out a rule may be at the expense of time spent in putting the rule

to some sort of productive practice.

o Students may hypothesise the wrong rule, or their version of the rule may be either too

broad or too narrow in its application: this is especially a danger where there is no overt

testing of their hypotheses, either through practice examples, or by eliciting an explicit

statement of the rule.

o It can place heavy demands on teachers in planning a lesson. They need to select and

organise the data carefully so as to guide learners to an accurate formulation of the rule, while also ensuring the data is intelligible.

o However carefully organised the data is, many language areas such as aspect and

modality resist easy rule formulation.

o An inductive approach frustrates students who, by dint of their personal learning style

or their past learning experience (or both), would prefer simply to be told the rule.

TEACHING GRAMMAR