Teaching of Grammar: Inductive or Deductive Approach?

When I posed one critical question to students in my reading class about which method is more effective in teaching grammar, majority of them confidently proposed the inductive method. Then, I purposely opposed their stance by saying the deductive method is more effective due to my reasons related to teaching and learning styles and personality factors of the learners. Having said this, I was hoping they will try their very best to defend their stance.

What surprised me that day was, although more than half of the class claimed to be the die-hard fans of the inductive method, not even a single student can really explain in any academic way the reasons why they seemed to agree with this inductive method. Immediately, a few questions lingered in my mind:

1)Am I teaching my students (future ESL teachers) to be parrots?

2)What benefits will my students gain from theories that I exposed to them if these theories are digested without any attempt to analyse and relate them to the reality of ESL teaching and learning in Malaysia?

3)Which is more fundamental in university teaching and learning process? Passing the exams or preparation to face the real world?

These are some reasons (followed by my comments) given by researchers why the inductive approach is currently in favour:

1) It goes in parallel with natural language acquisition, where rules are absorbed subconsciuosly with little or no conscious focus.

My comment: What is the percentage of students in Malaysia who really ACQUIRE English Language? Can someone present to me the percentage of students who ACQUIRE English language in Malaysia and the percentage of students who LEARN it? Which category do you think will show higher percentage?

2) It allows students to get a communicative "feel" for some aspect of language before getting possibly overwhelmed by grammatical explanations.

My comment: I suggest that any English Language teacher who teaches grammatical rules during his/her first English Language class should be dismissed from his/her job immediately. Only phsycologically instabled teachers will teach grammatical rules in his/her first session with the students. (In Malaysia)

3) It builds more intrinsic motivation by allowing students to discover rules rather than being told them.

My comment: The word "discover" in no 3 is too ambitious in Malaysian ESL teaching and learning environment. In 40 minutes of English Language lesson each day, where teachers have to meet 4-5 teaching objectives, how much discovery will the students manage to achieve?

Thus my stance is as such: There wuold be in many circumstances where the deductive approach or the combination of both approaches will need to be applied. The discovery (if any), made by students should be enforced with some simple deductive explanations. This is to make sure our students are given some basic guidelines to confirm what they have discovered.

Here is one humble advice to my students. Try to be critical and analytical. Do not just swallow all theories given to you. Theories are theoretical. Theories should serve as stimulants for us to put on our thinking cap.

Selfish or ignorant?

I consider myself as one lucky individual because after ten years leaving University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), that I am now given an opportunity to step into a university as an educator, whose responsibility is to produce a generation of professionals who are dynamic, creative, analytical, physically and psychologically and physically strong to face the new world order. Being chosen to train TESL students would mean I have been offered a series of huge, complicated and never-ending tasks which will require me to sacrifice my personality, routine, time and also money. My first week in the Faculty of Education and Language Studies had given me some hints to what I have been looking for before this; is the education system implemented in Malaysia serves the different critical purposes of this country?

Some questions which I would like to find the answers:

1. Are university students nowadays being selfish or ignorant?

2. What are the subjects that should have being make compulsory for them?

3. Who should be responsible for the negative characters portrayed by our undergraduates?

I hope I will have ample time and sources to get to the root of the problem..