An Overview of the Inductive Approach Using in English Grammar Teaching

Introduction This lesson plan focuses on passive voice and is designed for first grade students between 15 to 16 years old at senior high school in China. This essay will analyze the formation on the passive voice， as well as the usage and the errors. Secondly， I will briefly introduce my learners. Thirdly， it will discuss the inductive approach， the gap filling task and the writing task， which I chose to motivate my students to learn the passive voice well. Finally， it will mention about the learners’ errors in my lesson plan. Analysis of the language point concerned

Swan （2005） explains that ‘when A does something to B， there are often two ways to talk about it. If we want B to be the subject， we use： was built， is spoken， is being repaired， will be changed.’ Swan also points out that the subject of an active is not always expressed in the corresponding passive sentence. In this case， it usually happens in an expression with by and the noun is called the ‘agent’. According to Hewings （1999）， we

know that changing an active into a passive sentence involves move the object of the active sentence into the subject position in the passive sentence， and changing the main verb into the past participle form， preceded by the auxiliary be. A third step is optional， and may be left out if you wish， and that is to take the original subject of the active sentence and moving it to a position after the verb， preceded by the preposition by. The following example illustrates both possibilities： 1. ACTIVE： The earthquake destroyed the whole village. 2. PASSIVE： The whole village was destroyed. 3. PASSIVE： The whole village was destroyed by the earthquake.

Also， there are three major uses of passive： to say what has happened， to avoid mentioning the agent， to conform to normal English discourse （Penston， 2005）. Some examples are presented below， respectively.

1. To say what has happened to something/someone The society was founded in 1946 by Roland Berrill and Lancelot Ware.

2. To avoid mentioning the agent， who is not required to be or cannot be made know

It was originally known as the High IQ Society.

3. To conform to normal English discourse， keep the ‘topic’ at the front of the sentence and the new information in the predicate.

Roland Berrill played a lousy game…in the end they were crucified （by Lancelot Ware）. （Compare： Lancelot Ware wanted revenge… in short， they crucified Roland Berrill.） Aitken （2002） explains several errors in passive voice mainly about the form， spelling， punctuation， meaning and function problems. For Chinese students， the main reason of which is that Chinese and English belong to two different language systems. English Verbs have different forms in active voice and passive voice； unfortunately in Chinese verbs do not have any changes in different voices and tenses. While acquiring English passive voice， Chinese students will make errors because of the differences between the two kinds of languages. Although it seems to use passive voice better， while in Chinese still use the active voice instead of them. If you think about it， Chinese do not really have a ‘passive voice’. This is shown by the following examples from Chinese：

1. fan zhu hao le （饭煮好了= ‘rice cook already’