INDUCTIVE AND DEDUCTIVE METHODS OF TEACHING Students have different intellectual capacities and learning styles that favour

or hinder knowledge accumulation. As a result, teachers are interested in ways to effectively cause students to understand better and learn. Teachers want to bring about better understanding of the material he/she wants to communicate. It is the responsibility of the educational institutions and teachers to seek more effective ways of teaching in order to meet individual's and society's expectations from education. Improving teaching methods may help an institution meet its goal of achieving improved learning outcomes. Teaching methods can either be inductive or deductive or some combination of the two. The inductive teaching method or process goes from the specific to the general and may be based on specific experiments or experimental learning exercises. Deductive teaching method progresses from general concept to the specific use or application. These methods are used particularly in reasoning i.e. logic and problem solving. To reason is to draw inferences appropriate to the situation. Inferences are classified as either deductive or inductive. For example, "Ram must be in either the museum or in the cafeteria." He is not in the cafeteria; therefore he is must be in the museum. This is deductive reasoning. As an example of inductive reasoning, we have, "Previous accidents of this sort were caused by instrument failure, and therefore, this accident was caused by instrument failure. The most significant difference between these forms of reasoning is that in the deductive case the truth of the premises (conditions) guarantees the truth of the conclusion, whereas in the inductive case, the truth of the premises lends support to the conclusion without giving absolute assurance. Inductive arguments intend to support their conclusions only to some degree; the premises do not necessitate the conclusion. Inductive reasoning is common in science, where data is collected and tentative models are developed to describe and predict future behaviour, until the appearance of the anomalous data forces the model to be revised. Deductive reasoning is common in mathematics and logic, where elaborate structures of irrefutable theorems are built up from a small set of basic axioms and rules. However examples exist where teaching by inductive method bears fruit. 2) LANGUAGES:

A) Development of a story from a given outline is an example of inductive method because the student may develop any story from the given outline (specific) based on his/her imagination. B) Writing a letter to his father describing a particular event of his life, is an example of

inductive method because, the event and the language (use of words) differs from student to

student (general) while the format of the letter is always specific as it always starts with "Respected Father", then is the body of the letter and finally the closure is done by "your (loving) son/daughter" followed by name. C) Writing an essay on "the book I like most", is an example of inductive method because

while the format of essay i.e., introduction followed by body and finally, the conclusion, always remains the same (specific) but the book and the reasons for liking it and the words used differ from individual to individual (general).