Inductive approach to finding the subject of a sentence:
Create a tag to go with the sentence, then use the pronoun in the tag
to "erase" or replace the appropriate portion of the base sentence.
For example:
The students chosen to compete in the spelling bee will take a bus to
New York City tomorrow.
Add tag: The students chosen to compete in the spelling bee will take
a bus to New York City tomorrow, won't they?
[The students chosen to compete in the spelling bee] They will take a
bus to New York City tomorrow.
This is a problem-solving approach, as it gives the student a
procedure to apply to data in order to find a solution (identifying
the subject of the sentence.) The student proceeds by constructing a
tag, then using the pronoun in the tag to find the subject of the
base sentence. It's very important that this exercise is for native
speakers, who do not need to consult conscious knowledge to construct
the tag; this is done in milliseconds and without deliberation. The
"erasure" procedure is, however, done explicitly, with the check of
the result relying on native-speaker intuition.
There are many such tricks, for tasks ranging from deciding what is a
complete sentence, to deciding between 'who' and 'whom', to
identifying participles vs. gerunds (among verbs ending in '-ing'. No
explicit knowledge of grammar is needed to apply these tests; they
are tools for making one's subconscious knowledge of grammar explicit
and learning terminology and analysis skills to do so.
Deductive approach:
The subject of a sentence is the noun phrase that would be replaced
with a pronoun in a tag added to the sentence.
To my mind, this would reverse the procedure: The student would look
for the subject of the sentence, then create a tag, making sure that
the pronoun in the tag agreed with the subject. The choice of pronoun
would not be intuitive, but explicitly thought through.
Maybe this is bogus, but this is my understanding. To give an example
from my German classes: I would present students with paired
sentences, and ask them to discover a rule, in this case, verb
placeement in subordinate clauses.
Peter war heute nicht in der Klasse. Er ist krank. (Peter wasn't in
class today. He is sick.)
Peter war heute nicht in der Klasse, weil er krank ist. (Peter wasn't
in class today, because he is sick.)
Ich lernte in der Bibliothek. Nachdem bin ich schwimmengegangen. (I
studied in the library. Afterwards, I went swimming.)
Ich bin schwimmengegangen, nachdem ich in der Bibliothek lernte. (I
went swimming after I studied in the library.)
Students would notice that the verb "moves" to the end when a
sentence becomes a subordinate clause. This is the rule.
A deductive approach would be to state the rule: In German
subordinate clauses, the tensed verb occurs at the end of the clause.
Then I would present the sentence pairs in order to demonstrate the
rule. No action except paying attention and copying the rule is
necessary here. To me, that's boring, dry, external to the learner,
and not engaging.
To me, the first way of presenting things just seems naturally more
interesting and engaging. The students' own discovery of the rule is
what, to me, gives the oomph necessary to retain the rule better than
in the deductive method. The student might remember the experience of
discovery more keenly than the dry presentation of the rule -- the
accustomed way of learning language rules, which so many students
find deadly boring.
In my experience of learning folk dances and drum rhythm sequences, I
retain patterns better once I discover whatever logic they have --
logic that is difficult for a teacher to point out unless s/he is
quite talented. But this kind of learning involves motor skills,
which, if Oliver Sacks is correct in citing and claiming in a recent
New Yorker article, are stored elsewhere in the brain than factual
knowledge (the procedural/factual difference). Perhaps I find
inductive learning more interesting because it does draw on
procedural skills, while deductive learning depends on memorizing
factual statements, and applying them afterwards. Maybe the
difference is not all that significant. But I truly believe inductive
presentations are more engaging. I take care of the poor problem-
solvers by providing a deductive statement as a kind of review.
Perhaps this puts them at a disadvantage, but I usually have the
inductive work done in groups, so weaker students can observe the
stronger ones and still see what the answer is; they can also try the
procedure quietly on their own paper and not be punished or
embarrassed if they fail.
Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel.: 805.756.2184
Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/