Abstract

This paper introduces the inductive method to English grammar teaching that can help students to rediscover their subconscious knowledge of English grammar and bring it to consciousness, as the grammar of a language is acquired through abstracting a set of grammatical rules from language data, rather than through imitation (Chomsky, 1986; 1995; 2002). The fundamental ideas behind this inductive approach can be summarized as the following four steps: 1) give students a set of English language data about an area of English grammar; 2) ask students to generalize a grammatical rule from the set of data; 3) ask students to test the grammatical rule against new English language data; and 4) ask students to revise the grammatical rule to accommodate the new data. The significance of this inductive approach lies in the fact that it actively involves students in their English grammar learning process because they have to formulate grammatical rules by themselves and to check, test and revise these rules, rather than to memorize them without understanding why, and that it will reform the traditional way of teaching English grammar by bringing a fresh perspective into this field to develop and enhance students’ English grammar competence and skills.