Guided Discovery Approach

Guided Discovery

An approach to foster independent learning

The benefits

• It encourages analytic learning.
• It exploits learners’ cognitive skills.
• It improves critical thinking skills.
• It involves students in problem-solving tasks.
• It helps learners become aware of and articulate their mental processes.

• Learners participate actively in the learning process.
• Learners understand and remember better what they have worked out for themselves.

Cognitive Benefits

The benefits

• It resembles natural language learning/ language acquisition.

• If done in groups, it provides extra language practice.

Linguistic Benefits

The benefits

• It increases student participation and fosters collaboration.

• It empowers learners thus enhancing autonomy and self-reliance.

• It is motivating for learners who enjoy the hands-on approach.

Social Benefits

• Guided Discovery addresses some of the drawbacks associated with both deductive and inductive instruction as it is essentially learner-centered.
• The teacher becomes a facilitator, who guides learners in the right direction so as to avoid misunderstandings of the rules.
• It makes learning memorable since learners are actively involved in the process.
• It is meaningful because it involves the learners' own reasoning.

Deductive vs inductive

General to particular

Particular to general

01

Explicit

02

Implicit

03

Exposure to language first

Rules first

04

Rule-discovery learning

Rule-driven learning

In sum...

Fundamentally, the purpose of all language teaching is to improve communication and eventually prepare the learner to use the language on their own. The idea of “communicative competency” is related to this.

GD Approach

Always use a text to contextualize the lesson

Step 1

Create an initial task to allow the students to "focus on meaning" -

Step 2

Once meaning has been conveyed, focus on form (what part of speech, word order, specific rules, etc)

Step 3

It is importat to focus on Approciacy (levels of formality) and pronunciation.

Step 4

TEXT

Context

TIMELINE

GD tasks

Ready to try?

“Guided discovery really lends itself to a variety of concepts and aspects of language ranging from grammatical form and usae to pronunciation, spelling and lexis"