Inductive or Deductive Instruction

starting point of the class” (p. 150), in other words, “… what will our learners first embrace – the rules (deductive) or the language (inductive)?” (p. 152). Within a deductive approach, the linguistic forms are generally presented to the students at the beginning of the lesson (Erlam, 2003; Ó Duibhir et al., 2016). This approach is regarded as a, “… process that goes from the general to the specific, from consciously formulated rules to the application in language use” (Decco, 1996, p. 96). Alternatively stated, a lesson embracing a deductive approach begins with the presentation of the rule and is then followed by linguistic exemplars. It is often considered the first, “… P of the present-practise-produce sequence” (Ellis, 2006, p. 97) and may be explored as a rule-driven approach to grammar instruction. At the opposite end of the spectrum, an inductive approach to grammar instruction exists, whereby language samples are presented to the students and they are asked to arrive at their own metalinguistic generalisation (Ellis, 2006). In contrast to deductive approaches, an inductive approach is considered a “… process that goes from the particular to the general, i.e., from language examples to patterns, rule and generalisations” (Glaser, 2014b, p. 59) and it is often considered a rule-discovery method to grammar instruction (Thornbury, 1999). DeKeyser (1995, p. 380) offers an insightful summary of both terms, stating that, “… inductive means that examples are encountered before rules are inferred, deductive learning means that rules are presented before examples are encountered”.

A dearth of research evidence exists, to date, that explores the comparison effects of inductive versus deductive approaches on grammar instruction. While limited, current data suggests there is no significant difference in effectiveness between either of these ap- proaches (Erlam, 2003; Robinson, 1996; Rosa & O Neill, 1999). It is important to note, however, that that, although findings comparing inductive and deductive instructional ap- proaches are “inconclusive at this point” (Ishihara, 2010 p. 939), Ellis (2006) highlights the need for inductive and deductive approaches to be differentiated according to the students’ language ability, as, “… simple rules may be best taught deductively while more compli- cated rules may best be taught inductively” (p. 98). This aligns with the sociocultural theo-

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ry previously evaluated. Notwithstanding such inconclusive findings, research appears to present inductive approaches as an approach to promote more higher order thinking than a deductive approach (Ishihara, 2010), as they encourage the student to notice the linguistic feature first before any rule is explained to a student by their teacher. For this reason, in- ductive approaches are considered more learner-centred in nature, in comparison to deduc- tive approaches, which initially present the students with the rule, whereby such rules are then, in turn, applied to language samples. Accordingly, it could be argued, therefore, that inductive instructional approaches provide students with more time to reflect on linguistic forms, which is a common shortcoming of immersion education settings, as expressed ear- lier. Nonetheless, however, teachers often, and understandably so, regard an inductive ap- proach to grammar instruction as more time consuming than deductive approaches, which may then influence the teachers’ decision to avail of such an approach. Additionally, such an approach to grammar instruction is regularly criticised for its deficiency in guided sup- port provided to the student in discovering new linguistic forms. In contrast, although rules are explicitly provided to the students when a deductive approach is implemented, it too is regularly criticised for its “passivity” (Ní Dhiorbháin & Ó Duibhir, 2017, p. 6), while deeper analytical reflection of linguistic rules is recommended to foster accurate SLA (Vo- gel & Engelhard, 2011).

Interestingly, researchers often experiment with the inductive/deductive dichotomy by adding either an implicit or explicit approach to the equation. Arising from these com- binations, research studies have begun to present differences in effects on students’ L2 ac- quisition. As it is characteristic of a deductive approach to generally present linguistic forms and rules to the students at the beginning of the lesson, DeKeyser (1995) maintains that it is, therefore, impossible to construct an implicit-deductive instructional approach. As a result, researchers conclude that a deductive approach may only be teamed with an explicit approach to language instruction (Vogel, Herron, Cole, & York, 2011). In availing of an explicit-deductive approach, the linguistic rules and features are directly presented to the student from the outset of the lesson. Regarding an inductive approach, however, as language samples are initially provided to a student rather than explicitly stating the lin- guistic rules, it is proposed that an inductive interface may adopt either an explicit or im- plicit approach to language instruction (DeKeyser, 2003). Glaser (2014a, p. 60) clearly marks this differentiation in her matrix, as outlined on the next page in Table 2.1.

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Table 2.1.

The Implicit/Explicit and Inductive/Deductive Matrix

Explicit Implicit

Deductive Explicit-Deductive N/A

Inductive Explicit-Inductive Implicit-Inductive

(Glaser, 2014b, p. 153) It is relevant to document that an implicit-inductive approach is often criticised for the lack of teacher guidance and assistance provided to the students. It is argued that this may place a significant burden on the working memory of the student (Ní Dhiorbháin & Ó Duibhir, 2017), which in turn may hinder students’ grammar learning. In consonance of this, Kirschner et al. (2006, p. 77) caution that, “An instructional theory that ignores the limits of working memory when dealing with novel information or ignores the disappear- ance of those limits when dealing with familiar information is unlikely to be effective”. In contrast, a complete explicit-deductive approach may be criticised, as it does not enable learners to notice the linguistic features themselves (Schmidt, 1990). Thus, an explicit- deductive approach to grammar instruction may be guilty of providing too much scaffold to an L2 student in acquiring new linguistic concepts and, as expressed previously, such a practice may negatively affect a student’s L2 development (Lantolf & Poehner, 2014). Therefore, one may acknowledge that an effective instructional approach is generally availed of somewhere in the middle of the two poles, depending on the students’ develop- ing capacities. It appears then that an explicit-inductive approach provides the optimal an- swer to such demands.

The option of a combined explicit-inductive approach is often considered more fruitful in enhancing SLA than other approaches discussed (Shaffer, 1989; Vogel & Engel- hard, 2011; Vogel et al., 2011). One conclusion from these findings may be that guided discovery is considered a pivotal component of the explicit-inductive approach that an ex- plicit-deductive and implicit-inductive approach appears to lack (Crandall & Basturkmen, 2004). Such ‘guiding’ is a critical variable in providing an appropriate level of scaffold to the students’ language acquisition journey. A meta-analysis of 164 studies conducted by Alfieri, Brooks, Aldrich, and Tenenbaum (2011) concur that assisted help/guided instruc- tion is more effective in grammar instruction. Furthermore, Glaser (2014a, p. 70) maintains that, “… within the explicit paradigm, inductive instruction seems more promising than

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deductive instruction when it is conceptualised in the framework of guided discovery, i.e., teacher-assisted active student participation on discovery and constructing rules”. There- fore, it could be stated that an explicit-inductive approach provides a guided-inductive ap- proach to grammar instruction (Ní Dhiorbháin & Ó Duibhir, 2017). An explicit-inductive approach is further celebrated by Hammerly (1975, p. 18), who suggests that students re- tain knowledge better through discovery learning. These findings strongly support a soci- ocultural theory of learning, whereby scaffolded interaction between teacher and student is crucial to enhance learning; however, the students, ultimately, construct their own under- standings and rules (Ó Duibhir et al., 2016). In summary, in adapting an explicit-inductive or guided-inductive approach to grammar instruction, the teacher initially provides the stu- dent with the opportunity to independently attend to the linguistic features. This draws the- oretical support from Schmidt’s (1990) Noticing Hypothesis. As such, the teacher serves as a facilitator as he/she scaffolds the students learning to discover and construct the new lin- guistic rules. Therefore, an explicit-inductive approach is deeply rooted within a sociocul- tural perspective, as many of Vygotsky’s constructs, which were previously discussed, are incorporated.

Within the Irish context, and more specifically the Irish immersion context, re- search studies have been conducted which investigate the effects of an explicit-inductive approach on students’ grammatical accuracy. The current study builds on such Irish inves- tigations conducted in Irish immersion schools (Ní Dhiorbháin, 2010; Ní Dhiorbháin & Ó Duibhir, 2017). Therefore, it is important to the current study that such studies are un- packed and evaluated in detail.

2.7.3. Previous FFI Research in the Irish Context. Ní Dhiorbháin and Ó Duibhir