A Comparative Study On The Effects Of Inductive And Deductive Approaches To Teaching English Grammar In Senior High Schools

For centuries, grammar and grammar instruction had occupied an important position in the course of language teaching and learning. However, with the evolution of pedagogical and linguistic theories, the roles of the grammar and grammar instruction in language study began to be continuously questioned. Some linguists start to get doubtful whether grammar should be taught; others even directly resist teaching grammar. It is due to the influences that, even up till now, there still exit some uncertainties and ambiguous cognition about grammar teaching in the area of language teaching. Fortunately, years of language teaching practice has made numerous language teachers and researches convince that the problem of grammar teaching in nowadays language education has come to the stage of what and how to teach.Inductive and deductive grammar instructions are two basic approaches in grammar teaching. Many researchers abroad have done a great number of researches to compare the effects of the two approaches in grammar teaching, though findings are various, some are even contradictory. At the same time, at home, the concerning researches which can be found are not much. So, it is very necessary to do more researches on the effects of the two approaches in grammar instruction, in expectation of discovering any valuable findings to boost the practice of grammar teaching and learning.Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to make a comparison of the effects of inductive grammar instruction approach with deductive one, so as to find out which one is more effective in teaching grammar in short-term and which one is more effective in long-term by carrying out experiment. In order to achieve the aims, two classes of a certain rural Senior High School were chosen as subjects, and the Emphatic Pattern was selected as the target grammar item. In Class One(EC), the target grammar item was taught inductively while in Class Two(CC), the target grammar item was taught deductively. The score analyses via SPSS 13.0 of the Pre-test indicate that there are not significant differences between EC and CC both in integrative English performance and in target grammar skills. After the treatments, Immediate-test was administrated immediately and the Delayed-test was administrated one month later in both classes, all scores were collected and analyzed via SPSS 13.0. The analyses of the scores indicate that, both inductive and deductive grammar instruction approaches can improve students’ performance in tests, and comparatively, inductive grammar instruction approach is more effective than deductive one both in short-term and long-term in teaching grammar item, the Emphatic Pattern. At the same time, just before and after the experimental treatment, one questionnaire was separately administrated to probe into the deep thoughts of the students on grammar teaching and learning. The analyses of the results of the Pre-questionnaires indicate that there are not significant differences in students’ opinions on the significance of the grammar to their English study, attitudes to the current teaching approaches, interests in grammar learning, the current grammar teaching methods and the effects of the present teaching method in EC and CC; The analyses of the results of the Post-questionnaires imply that more students show interest in inductive grammar instruction approach in EC than that in deductive one in CC and that more students think inductive approach is effective in EC than that deductive one in CC. All these findings in questionnaires provided deeper information and underlying evidence about the result of the comparison of the effects of the two grammar teaching approaches.At last, based on the findings of this study, some implications for grammar instructions in classroom as well as some suggestions for further researches on the subject were specially presented in the end of the thesis.