Facilitating guided inductive activities - Dana

Facilitating guided
inductive activities
in grammar instruction
Jonathan Smart
AZ-TESOL, 2011

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Guided induction: overview
Deductive & inductive instruction
Guided induction
•Caveats
•Where & When
•4 steps to guided induction
•Sample activities (x2)

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Deductive/Inductive approaches
• Language learning has traditionally included
deductive, rule-based grammar instruction or no
grammar instruction at all.
• Inductive grammar instruction has been used in
different ways for several decades.

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Deductive instruction
• commonly follow the sequence of Present – Practice
– Produce.
• Often criticized for focusing too much on learning
rules and not using or examining the language.

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Inductive instruction
• Learners discover language structures/patterns
through interacting with the target language.
•Can be motivating/requires investment
• May or may not include explicit rules.
• Often criticized for taking too much time and…
• Learners may develop inaccurate rules or
understanding of the language structures.

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Deductive vs. Inductive
• Some agreement exists that the most effective
grammar teaching includes some deductive and
inductive characteristics (Haight, Herron, & Cole,
2007).

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Deductive vs. Inductive
• The goal of grammar learning is to internalize the
grammar for use (production and comprehension).
•It is not necessary to learn explicit grammar rules to
internalize grammar (nor is it necessarily bad to learn
explicit rules).

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Guided induction
•Hybrid evolution of purely inductive instruction.
•Learner-focused with teacher assistance
•Learners work on tasks to discover language on their
own, but the tasks are scaffolded and supported by
the teacher (i.e., enhanced).

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Guided Induction: Some Caveats
• Guided induction is based around lots of language
input and requires preparation on the part of the
teacher.
• Learner-centered and inductive instruction have
often been criticized as requiring advanced or highly-
motivated students.

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Guided Induction: Some Caveats
•Teachers should consider the metalinguistic tools
learners will need to accomplish inductive tasks (Do
they need to know the parts of speech? Do you want
them to be able to talk about/explain their findings?)
•Careful grouping and information sharing activities
can make guided induction activities more successful.

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Guided Induction: Where & When?
What grammar can be taught using guided induction?
• Features that do not rely on complex rule sets.
•Features that are very lexico-grammatical (i.e., where
word choice affects form/meaning).

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Guided Induction: Where & When?
When does guided induction fit into the classroom?
• Typically not for spontaneous or focus-on-form
lessons (prepared examples are necessary).
•Learners should have clear goals to understand
language or language and content .

Facilitating guided inductive activities
4 Steps for Guided Induction
based on Flowerdew, 2009:
1. Illustration: looking at data.
2. Interaction: discussion and sharing observations
and opinions.
3. Intervention: optional step to provide learners with
hints or clearer guides for induction.
4. Induction: making one’s own rule for a particular
feature.

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Illustration
• Pre-selected language input developed by the
teacher.
•Teacher gives learners input that shows enough
similarities or differences among examples that a
pattern can be identified.
•Language should be appropriate for the level of the
students.

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Interaction
•Students are guided by the teacher to make
observations about the language examples (e.g.,
finding similarities or differences).
•Activity should be focused towards solving a problem
(e.g., explaining a difference between examples)
using the language input.
•Activities are often in pairs or small groups.

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Intervention
• Teacher can intervene at this point as necessary to
aid students.
•Teacher should have careful hints or suggestions to
help learners move closer towards discovering the
answer or language pattern.

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Induction
• Once learners have come to some conclusions
about the language, they can also be tasked with
developing a rule or explanation of what they
observed in the input.
•This can be compared against established grammar
rules (students often want to see how they did, and
this helps ensure their own rules are accurate).

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Goals of Inductive Activities
• What do you want your students to discover?
• Language structure

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Discovering language structure
• Do you want the students to talk about the structure
or just encounter it?
How much metalanguage do the students need to
know?
What do you want students to be able to do with the
feature?

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Sample activities
1. Archaic vocabulary from Shakespeare
2. Multi-word verbs.

Facilitating guided inductive activities
Thank you for your time!
•If you have any further questions, please contact me
at Jonathan.Smart@nau.edu
•This PowerPoint and handouts will be available at
http://dana.ucc.nau.edu/js465