Kuma 8

This chapter really opened my eyes to intuitive heuristics and inductive teaching methods and how it shows to increase grammatical comprehension. Although I have been in Spanish and English classes my entire life, I had never really thought about the way the grammar of each language was being presented to me. After reading this chapter, it seems to me that each and every teacher I have had had chosen a deductive approach. In my lower level Spanish classes, where learning grammatical rules took place, I can recall always being spoon fed rules, rules, rules. They were either written on the board, or printed in our books for us to simply copy down. My teacher would always read aloud the rule, and we would listen.

I think that this chapter shows that students should be involved in higher level thinking and incorporating their own conclusions on grammar rules. It seems to me that the teachers should work as facilitators to prompt students to explain how they come about getting the ‘answer’ rather than giving it to them. This in turn will help them to find their own confidence in the language.