Some teachers see no need to teach and practise grammar at all. Some even regard structure practice and other forms of grammar teaching as harmful. Their view is that learners will pick up the regularities intuitively, provided they meet enough samples of natural language. The teacher’s role, as they see it, is to provide a language-rich environment in which the learners meet comprehensible language as they engage in activities of various kinds. The learners are expected to pick up the language, just as they did their mother tongue. Yet, at some stage, students must learn the grammar of the language, even if this is to be done later, in high school, for example, as it happens with many of my students.
The deductive approach
The deductive method of teaching grammar has the following characteristics:
- An academic and scholarly style which was devised in order to teach Latin and Greek;
- It has simple rules: a teacher introduces the students to grammatical rules and structures in English by means of multiple media – textbooks, classnotes, lectures, etc. After this, the teacher initiates the students into the practice of the presented rules through controlled activities. This accelerates the learning process and finally the student is allowed to engage in wide-ranging activities;
- It is very conventional and it is essentially a step-by-step process;
- Special attention is paid to areas of conflict between the grammar of the mother tongue and that of the target language;
- The whole approach is cognitive, with learners considering the rules and weighing their words before they speak or write.
What is more, the deductive approach to language teaching is traditionally associated with Grammar – Translation method. This is an unfortunate association because the method has had a bad press, mainly due to the fact that, since classes were taught in the students’mother tongue, there was little opportunity for them to practise the target language. It is important to stress that the deductive method is not necessarily dependent on translation. In fact, many popular student grammar practice books adopt a deductive approach, with all their explanations and exercises in English. A good example is the well known “Advanced Language Practice” by Michael Vince.
Furthermore, many of the pros and cons of a deductive (rule-driven) approach hinge on the quality of the actual rule explanation. According to Michael Swan there are several criteria that contribute to make a rule a good one:
- Truth: Rules should be true. While truthfullness may need to be compromised in the interests of clarity and simplicity, the rule must bear some resemblance to the reality it is describing;
- Limitation: Rules should show clearly what the limits are on the use of a given form;
- Clarity: Rules should be clear. Lack of clarity is often caused by ambiguity or obscure terminology;
- Simplicity: Rules should be simple. Lack of simplicity is caused by overburdening the rule with sub-categories in order to cover all possible instances and account for all possible exceptions;
- Familiarity: An explanation should try to make use of concepts already familiar to the learner. Few learners have specialised knowledge of grammar, although they may well be familiar with some basic terminology used to describe the grammar of their own language;
- Relevance: A rule should answer only those questions that the student needs answered.
In conclusion, among the advantages of a deductive approach there are:
- It gets straight to the point, and can therefore be time-saving. Many rules can be more simply and quickly explained than elicited from examples. This will allow more time for practice and application;
- It respects the intelligence and maturity of many – especially adult- students, and acknowledges the role of cognitive processes in language acquisition;
- It confirms many students’ expectations about classroom learning, particularly for those learners who have an analytical learning style;
- It allows the teacher to deal with language points as they come up, rather than having to anticipate them and prepare for them in advance.
Also, some of the disadvantages would be:
- Starting the lesson with a grammar presentation may be off-putting for some students, especially younger ones. They may not have sufficient metalanguage. Or they may not be able to understand the concepts involved;
- Grammar explanation encourages a teacher–fronted, transmission–style classroom; teacher explanation is often at the expense of student involvement and interaction;
- Explanation is seldom as memorable as other forms of presentation, such as demonstration;
- Such an approach encourages the belief that learning a language is simply a case of knowing the rules.
Bibliography
Michael Vince, Advanced Language Practice, Macmillan, Oxford, 2003
Michael Swan, Practical English Usage, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005