English Language Teaching in its Social Context

196 DAVID NUNANExample 3Look at the picture. Whose apartment is this? Make guesses about the person who liveshere. Circle your guesses and then explain them by circling the clues in the picture.3 '5-1 I1. The person is2. Theperson3. The person4. The person is5. The person is6. The person is7. The person is8. The person is9. The person is10. The person isa man / a womanhas a baby / doesn't have a babyhas a pet / doesn't have a petathletic / not athletica coffee drinker / not a coffee drinkerwell-educated / not well-educateda smoker / not a smokermiddle class I poora music lover / not a music loveron a diet / not on a dietClassrooms where the principle of active exploration has been activated will becharacterized by an inductive approach to learning in which learners are given access todata and provided with structured opportunities to work out rules, principles, andapplications for themselves.The idea here is that information will be more deeply processedand stored if learners are given an opportunity to work things out for themselves, ratherthan simply being given the principle or rule.Encouraging learners to explore relationships between grammar and discourseTasks exploiting this principle show learners that grammar and discourse are inextricablyinterlinked, and that grammatical choices (for example, whether to combine two pieces ofinformation using co-ordination or subordination) will be determined by considerations ofcontext and purpose. Such tasks help learners to explore the functioning of grammar in