Effective ways of teaching grammar at secondary school

Why use the inductive approach?

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  It moves the focus away from the teacher as the giver of knowledge to the learners as discoverers of it.
  

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  It moves the focus away from rules to use – and use is, after all, our aim in teaching.
  

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  It encourages learner autonomy. If learners can find out rules for themselves then they are making significant steps towards being independent. We can take this further by letting learners decide what aspect of the language in a text they want to analyse.
  

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  It teaches a very important skill – how to use real/almost-real language to find out the rules about English.
  

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  It can be particularly effective with low levels and with certain types of young learners. It enables these students to focus on use, not complex rules and terminology.
  

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  If we use authentic material as our context, then learners are in contact with real language, not coursebook English.
  

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  We can exploit authentic material from a wide range of sources to present our target language.
  

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  The rules and structures students discover are often more valid, relevant and authentic than in a deductive approach, as they can be drawn from real use of English.
  

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  The action of discovery helps learners remember.
  

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  It reflects the acquisition process that children learn by, i.e. being in contact with the language and using it, then finding rules and applying them to new contexts.
  

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  This kind of task – and the independence it fosters - is stimulating and motivating for many learners.
  

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  This approach naturally encourages more communication, as learners need to discuss language together.
  

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  We are able to respond better to the needs of our learners. For example, we can clearly see and address problems with understanding of a certain rule or item of lexis as learners go through the process of identifying and analyzing it.
  

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  We can support and encourage new learning styles and strategies. For example, this kind of approach is good to develop reflective learning and learning in groups, and encourages the strategy of using the English around us to find rules and examples.[14]
  

Similar to the deductive approach, the inductive approach offers advantages and

disadvantages as seen in the Table 2 below.

TABLE 2

Advantages and disadvantages of the inductive approach to teaching grammar

[16, pp. 122-141]