The effects of deductive and inductive approaches on the acquisition of English demonstratives by Jordanian 4 ^th grade EFL learners

This study aims to investigate the effects of deductive and inductive instructions on the acquisition of English demonstrative determiners by 78 Arabic-speaking 4th graders in an attempt to determine which of the two instructions is more effective. We adopted the experimental design of a pre- and post-test to measure the participants’ knowledge of English demonstrative determiners before and after the treatment. The 78 participants were divided into two groups: deductive and inductive groups. We administered a 10-item multiple-choice test as the pre- and post-test to determine whether the two types of instructions expand the participants’ knowledge. Descriptive statistics were initially calculated, followed by Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) to examine the differential effects of the two instructional methods. The results show that the inductive group outperformed their counterpart group on the post-test, suggesting that the inductive approach has yielded better outcomes in teaching English demonstrative determiners to Jordanian young EFL learners. Students in the inductive group were engaged in various activities in which demonstrative determiners were used in a comprehensible and meaningful context. This enables students to infer the rules by themselves and to establish a connection between each demonstrative determiner and its function.