Conclusion
As can be seen, both approaches provide opportunities for learning and address the
needs of different kinds of learners and learning contexts. Like almost all the decisions
we make in the classroom, we must be guided by our learners’ aims.
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• The inductive approach may be more attractive to us as teachers but does it support our
students’ learning fully?
• The deductive approach may be more controllable but does it give our learners the
opportunity to develop their strategies and learning styles?
And like many of our decisions regarding the way we teach, the best way forward may be
to blend the two, guided by our aims and our understanding of our own learners. For
example, it may be useful for a class to start with a deductive approach and then move
on to a more inductive way of learning once they are used to analysis of the language
and ways of describing it.
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