The Advantages and Disadvantages of Grammar discovery technique

E. The Advantages and Disadvantages of Grammar discovery technique

1. The advantages of Discovery Learning In general, Discovery Learning method may have several advantages as proposed by Mendikbud 2013. They are as follows:

a. Helping students to improve and enhance the writing skills and cognitive processes

b. The knowledge gained through these methods is very personal and powerful because can strengthen the understanding and retention

c. This method allows the students develop rapidly and in accordance with own pace.

d. Helping the students to direct their own learning activities involving their wits and

their own motivation. It will improve their grammar and vocabulary in writing.

e. This method can help students reinforce the concept of writing skill itself, because they have a confidence in collaboration with others.

f. This method is centered on students and teachers alike participate actively state the ideas. Even the teachers can act as a student, and as a researcher in the discussion part.

g. Helping students to overcome skepticism because the discovery learning leads to final and certain truths.

h. Students will understand the basic concepts of writing and ideas well so that it will improve their organization and content in writing.

i. Encouraging students to think and formulate their own hypotheses j. Providing decisions that are intrinsic. k. Learning situation becomes more aroused. l. Increasing the level of awards to the students so that it will improve the students‟

mechanic skill in writing. m. Students learn to utilize various types of learning resources. n. It can develop their individual talents and skills.

The other advantages are also stated by Murphy, et al (2010) as follows:

1) Highly Motivating

a. Students are engaged actively in the learning process.

b. They are responsible for their own successes and failures.

c. They have something at stake.

2) Problem Solving

a. It fosters the growth of problem solving and creative skills.

b. It is similar to on-job learning that will occur as adults.

c. It instils lifelong learning skills

3) Personalization

a. The learning experience is tailored to each child.

b. It gives the students autonomy and independence.

4) Developing an Interest in Learning

a. Students discover their own ways of learning.

b. Students must utilize their own prior knowledge and understanding.

c. Develops curiosity.

5) Memory

a. Students may be more likely to retain the information if they learn it on their own terms.

b. When they learn the information in context, they may be more likely to remember it than if they are taught from a textbook exclusively.

2. The Disadvantages of Discovery Learning According to Mendikbud (2013), some advantages of using Discovery Learning Method are:

a. This method raises the assumption that there is a readiness of mind to learn. The students who have low intelligent, will have difficulty in thinking or expressing abstract or relationships between concepts, written or oral, and finally will cause frustration.

b. This method is not efficient to teach many students, because it will take a long time to help them find a theory or solving other problems.

c. Teacher and students who usually applied the old method will be difficult to understand the new concept in the new method. Consequently, the teaching learning process does not run

d. Teaching discovery is more suitable for developing understanding, whereas to

develop aspects of concepts, skills and overall emotional still have less attention.

e. In some disciplines, such as Science, it still lacks of facilities for measuring ideas expressed by the students

f. Not provide opportunities to the students to find and discover the material of lesson they like because it has been pre-selected by the teacher. Based on Murphy, et al (2010) in their article proposes some disadvantages of applying the Discovery Learning method. They are:

1) Not easy to implement Learners need to possess a number of cognitive skills and be intrinsically motivated to learn.

2) Pure Model vs. Guided Model Teachers have found that discovery learning is most successful when students have prerequisite knowledge and undergo some structured experiences. Most researchers would argue that pure discovery learning as general and global teaching strategy for beginning and intermediary learners doesn't work. The debate on how much guiding is needed is somewhat open.

3) Measurable performance (compared to hard-core instructional designs) is worse for most learning situations.

4) Creations of misconceptions ("knowing less after instruction")

5) In order to benefit from a discovery situation, students must have basic knowledge about the problem and must know how to apply problem-solving strategies. Without this knowledge and skill, they will flounder and grow frustrated. Instead of learning from the materials, they may simply play with them.

6) Critics believe that discovery learning is so inefficient and so difficult to organize successfully that other methods are preferable. This seems especially true for lower- ability students. Discovery methods may make too many demands on these students because they lack the background knowledge and problem-solving skills needed to benefit.