As an adjunct instructor, I usually content myself to read these discussions with interest, but some of these seem to be worth chiming in on despite the possibility of looking foolish in front of people with many more years of experience.

I always tend to question distinctions of induction and deduction because it seems that inductive reasoning ultimately rests on deductive reasoning or assumptions. In Johanna's examples or even in Ron's more "inductive" strategy, the exercise is created to arrive at a convention/rule/"rule of thumb" that has already been deduced by the instructor.

The questionable distinction between deduction and induction is something brought up in Jeanne Fahnestock and Marie Secor's 1983 article "Teaching Argument: A Theory of Types", an article I have sometimes used to discuss argument with students. In the article Fahnestock and Secor cite Karl Popper who argues:

But in fact the belief that we can start with pure observation alone, without anything in the nature of a theory, is

absurd...

Twenty-five years ago I tried to bring this home the same point to a group of physics students in Vienna by

beginning the lecture with the following instructions: "Take pencil and paper; carefully observe and write down what

you have observed!" They asked, of course, what I wanted them to observe. Clearly the instruction 'Observe!' is

absurd.... Observation is always selective. It needs a chosen object, a definite task, an interest, a point of view, a

problem."

--Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Harper and Row 1963

Essentially, we cannot begin to inductively reason until we have deductively determined an idea to base the induction on. In Johanna's examples, she is leading students to the deductively determined idea. Ron's alternatives present more accurately a teaching method that instructs students simply to "Observe!" and draw conclusions--likely removing the very element that might make Johanna's tactics so useful. Even in Ron's examples, instructors already have a deductive rule that they want the students to arrive at inductively; highlighting the subjects and predicates reveals the deduction present.

Ultimately, I think the question of induction vs. deduction is moot. Whether tactics focus on applying a rule to a specific example or using multiple examples to arrive at a rule, the real question is whether they work for students. As a student, I always chaffed at "inductive" pedagogies because, in my pride, I felt somewhat insulted by the round about method the teacher was using to tell us what she/he wanted us to know. I cannot, however, deductively assume that I was a typical student. Many students likely benefit from discovering something themselves instead of being told a principle first then shown examples--a tactic I employ often myself in spite of my own aversion to it. For different students, we need different approaches.

That is my understanding and take on the subject, but I look forward to more experienced views.

John H. Whicker

Adjunct Faculty

Department of English

Utah Valley State College

and
Salt Lake Community College

----- Original Message -----

From: Ronald Sheen

To: [log in to unmask]

Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 8:44 PM

Subject: Re: Inductive - Deductive:was New discussion intelligence and grammar learning

If one takes the descriptions of the two approaches given below (From TESOL's web page), Johanna's examples from her teaching of German are orthdox uses of the approaches.

However, in the first example below which she terms 'inductive', isn't there a problem? In my view, it is not inductive but more a rule of thumb for finding the subject of the sentence. In fact, isn't it more deductive because one deduces the subject by following a rule. There is no induction involved.

An inductive approach would entail (as a first step, for example) more presenting students with diffferent syntactic forms with let's say the subjects highlighted in red and the objects of the verb highlighted in blue and getting students to work out what the reds and blues have in common. And then go on from there.

This is a subject which seems pretty straightforward but it can become more difficult when one starts to examine Johanna's examples. And then. after all, it doesn't matter too much what you call an approach if you're using it successfully.

Ron Sheen

> 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.

The deductive approach represents a more traditional style of teaching in that the grammatical structures or rules are dictated to the students first (Rivers and Temperley 110). Thus, the students learn the rule and apply it only after they have been introduced to the rule. For example, if the structure to be presented is present perfect, the teacher would begin the lesson by saying, "Today we are going to learn how to use the present perfect structure." Then, the rules of the present perfect structure would be outlined and the students would complete exercises, in a number of ways, to practice using the structure. (Goner, Phillips, and Walters 135) In this approach, the teacher is the center of the class and is responsible for all of the presentation and explanation of the new material.

The inductive approach represents a more modern style of teaching where the new grammatical structures or rules are presented to the students in a real language context (Goner, Phillips, and Walters 135). The students learn the use of the structure through practice of the language in context, and later realize the rules from the practical examples. For example, if the structure to be presented is the comparative form, the teacher would begin the lesson by drawing a figure on the board and saying, "This is Jim. He is tall." Then, the teacher would draw another taller figure next to the first saying, "This is Bill. He is taller than Jim." The teacher would then provide many examples using students and items from the classroom, famous people, or anything within the normal daily life of the students, to create an understanding of the use of the structure. The students repeat after the teacher, after each of the different examples, and eventually practice the structures meaningfully in groups or pairs. (Goner, Phillips, and Walters 135-136) With this approach, the teacher's role is to provide meaningful contexts to encourage demonstration of the rule, while the students evolve the rules from the examples of its use and continued practice (Rivers and Temperley 110).
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