Effects of Guided Inductive and Deductive Instruction on Grammar Learning in an EFL Context

Abstract

This quasi-experimental study attempted to explain how students benefit from two different approaches to grammar instruction-guided inductive and deductive instruction by investigating learning outcome and learning strategies of 50 Thai Mathayom 3 students whose English proficiency was low. Twenty-six of them were taught with guided inductive and 24 with deductive instruction. Four grammatical structures -Past perfect, Passive voice, Reported speech, and Conditional sentences - were targeted and the same content was used in both groups. To explore the learning outcome, participants' pretest and posttest scores were compared. To investigate the learning strategies used, 12 participants (six from each instructional approach) were invited to take part in stimulated recalls after each lesson. The analysis of pretest and posttest scores showed that, overall, the participants benefited from both guided inductive and deductive instruction. Looking closely across the four grammatical structures, significant differences were found for the three target grammatical structures: Past Perfect, Passive voice, and Conditional sentences. Stimulated recall data, in addition, showed that the participants in each group engaged in different strategies while learning. A higher number of the participants in the deductive group reported using memory strategies than those in the guided inductive group. Cognitive and compensation strategies, however, were used by a higher number of the participants in the guided inductive group. With regard to learning strategies, it was found that there is a variation in strategies used across the four target structures. Compensation strategies were the most frequently used of all the strategies in learning Past perfect and Conditional sentences (50 - 58% for Past perfect and 55.37% -56% for Conditional sentences). Cognitive strategies were the most frequently used in Reported speech (57.78% -68%). Memory strategies, however, were used the least frequently (55.56%) in learning Passive voice. The study concluded that not only do the teaching approaches contribute to success in grammar teaching, but other factors, such as the target structures and learning strategy use do affect learning achievement. The selection of teaching approach should therefore take these factors into account. For further research, it would be interesting to investigate the effectiveness of the grammar instruction which focuses on different target structures and the students with different levels of proficiency as well as other factors that may either facilitate or obstruct grammar development.