Guided Discovery: When it works... and when it doesn’t

What would you say if I told you that as an English teacher, it’s not always your job to TELL your learners about the rules of the language and sometimes it’s good to let them work it out for themselves…

Let’s talk about guided discovery learning.

Now, that may sound a bit grand, but actually the basic idea is very simple.

It’s a way of presenting language, especially grammar, where instead of the teacher just saying, “Right, here’s the rule,” the learners are guided to figure it out like a puzzle.

So if we rewind a bit, there are two different approaches to presenting language.

deductive and inductive.

A deductive approach is the one most people think of first.

The teacher gives the rule and then gives examples, or asks the learners to apply it.

So it goes from rule to example.

An inductive approach goes the other way round.

You start with examples of language and the learners look for patterns in them. Usually the teacher helps by asking questions, and that’s what makes it a guided discovery approach rather than just leaving everybody to flounder about and hope for the best.

So instead of saying, “Here’s the past simple. We add -ed,” you might give learners a short text and ask them to underline all the verbs.

If they’re low-level learners and the examples are chosen carefully, they’ll notice that lots of the verbs end in -ed.

Then you might give them another short text with some irregular verbs in it, just so they can see that, as ever with English grammar, things are not entirely tidy.

This approach is sometimes also called noticing, and sometimes consciousness raising, but the labels aren’t so important The main point is that learners are looking at examples and being helped to notice how the language works.

So, is this better than a deductive approach?

Well… maybe. Sometimes. It depends. And I think that’s the honest answer.

The research evidence is mixed. Some studies suggest it works well, some suggest it doesn’t work so well, so there isn’t a neat little answer here.

What I would say, though, is that there are some possible advantages.

One is that if learners work out a rule for themselves, it may stick better. It may be more memorable.

Another is that it gives them practice in spotting patterns, which may help them become better language learners more generally.

And for me, one of the big pluses is that it stops the teacher standing at the front delivering a long grammar lecture while the learners drop off to sleep.

It makes learners more active and I think that’s usually a good thing.

Now, there are downsides as well. Some learners just don’t like this approach.

That may be because of personal preference, educational background, culture, level, any number of things. Some learners simply want the rule explained clearly and then they want to get on with it.

It can also be quite demanding for the teacher.

You need to be flexible, you need a good knowledge of language yourself, and you need to be able to find examples that actually work. And that’s not always easy- although you can always ask Ai to help.

The other big problem is that some grammar rules just aren’t tidy enough for guided discovery.

Some work beautifully. Some really don’t.

And I think this is where people can get a bit overexcited about the approach and start trying to use it for everything.

Take the present perfect, for example, which is, frankly, a horrible animal.

You might give learners examples like:

I’ve seen him this week.
I saw him last week.

And they may look at that and say, “Right. I see. Present perfect for unfinished time, simple past for finished time.”

And yes, fair enough. That often works. But then you add another example or two and the whole thing starts wobbling.

So this is a good reminder that some language points look tidy at first but can quickly become quite murky when you start digging.

On the other hand, some things do work very nicely with guided discovery.

In general, Guided Discovery tends to work best where the meaning is fairly straightforward but the form is a bit fiddly.

Comparatives and superlatives are a good example.

The basic meaning is not too hard, but there are a number of different forms, so learners can look at examples and be guided towards the patterns.

Question tags are another good one.

Again, the meaning is easy and in most languages it’s just a bit of extra language added to the end of a sentence, but the form in English is a bit of a nightmare.

So you can give examples and then ask questions to help learners notice what happens with positive and negative auxiliaries, and which auxiliary gets used.

Other possibilities would be conditionals, determiners with countable and uncountable nouns, adverbs of frequency, or the backshift of tenses in reported speech. In other words, things where the form has enough pattern in it for guided discovery to be useful.

So I think the main thing I’d say is this: Guided discovery is a useful tool.

It can work very well when the examples are clear and the rule is clear enough to be discovered.

It can make learners more active and may make the language more memorable.

BUT it’s not the answer to everything, and it is not automatically better than just explaining something clearly.

And just one final point before we finish. Guided discovery is about presenting language. It’s about helping learners understand how the language works.

That does not mean that because they now understand it, they can use it fluently and accurately. They’ll still need practice. Quite a lot of it usually.

So don’t confuse “They seem to understand the rule” with “They can now use it properly.” Those are two different things.

So, as with most things in teaching, it’s not really a question of “Is this the best method?” It’s more a question of “When is this useful, and when is it not?”

If you’d like more help with teaching grammar, I have two great courses on my site:

Grammar for Language Teachers will give you a solid foundation in the ‘what’ of grammar: the terminology and what’s tricky for learners.

Teaching Grammar Communicatively is more about the how: making sure it’s meaningful and engaging!

Check them out at the link above.

Thanks very much for watching and I’ll see you next time.