A summary of a Thornbury talk: you’re teaching grammar even when you think you aren’t (recasts are implicit grammar teaching). Inductive/deductive and explicit/implicit are options, not camps. ‘Be eclectic. It’s not an either-or decision.‘
Decision points
- Planned (syllabus) vs reactive (error-driven) grammar.
- Implicit feedback (recasts, reformulation) to protect communication vs explicit (draw attention) when the gap needs noticing.
- Inductive lesson: a model text, picture or storyboard; ask learners for reasons (“Why this form here?”), not only rules.
- Test rules against learners’ lives. (A student objected that he never makes “spontaneous decisions”, so the will-for-spontaneous-decisions rule didn’t fit.)
Sources
Thornbury (1997) “Reformulation and reconstruction: tasks that promote ‘noticing’”, ELT Journal 51(4), 326–335.
Limits
A participant’s summary; she left early.
Apply in my context (Claude)
- The “ask for reasons, not rules” move is a strong guided-discovery upgrade for Prepare grammar pages, and quotable in DELTA M1 Paper 2 methodology answers.
Connections
Focus on form vs focus on formS · Grammar should be taught through lexis, not PPP rules · DELTA Module 1 Paper 2 - task-by-task technique