Types of drills

By Shahad dheyaa

I. CONCEPT
A. Definition
Drilling​ is a technique that has been used in foreign language classrooms for many years. It
was a key feature of audio-lingual method approaches to language teaching, which placed
emphasis on repeating structural patterns through oral practice.
Drilling means listening to a model, provided by the teacher, or a tape or another student
and repeating what is heard. Drilling is a technique that is still used by many teachers when
introducing new language items to their students.
Harmer states that drilling is mechanical ways if getting students to demonstrate and
practice their ability to use specific language items in a controlled manner.
From those theories above, it can be concluded that drilling is a technique that has been
used in foreign language classrooms which emphasis on repeating structural pattern through
oral practice to demonstrate students’ ability in using specific language items in a controlled
manner.
It is useful to distinguish between three different kinds of practice in teaching – mechanical,
meaningful, and communicative.
Mechanical practice​ refers to a controlled practice activity which students can successfully
carry out without necessarily understanding the language they are using. Examples of this
kind of activity would be repetition drills and substitution drills designed to practice use of
particular grammatical or other items. Activities of this kind are of limited value in developing
communicative language use.
Meaningful practice​ refers to an activity where language control is still provided but where
students are required to make meaningful choices when carrying out practice. For example,
in order to practice the use of prepositions to describe locations of places, students might be
given a street map with various buildings identified in different locations. They are also given
a list of prepositions such as across from, on the corner of, near, on, next to. They then have
to answer questions such as “Where is the book shop? Where is the café?” Etc. The practice
is now meaningful because they have to respond according to the location of places on the
map.
Communicative practice​ refers to activities where practice in using language within a real
communicative context is the focus, where real information is exchanged, and where the
language used is not totally predictable. For example students might have to draw a map of
their neighborhood and answer questions about the location of different places in their
neighborhood, such as the nearest bus stop, the nearest café, etc.
Exercise sequences in many communicative course book take students from mechanical, to
meaningful to communicative practice but give priority to meaningful and communicative
practice.
Types of drilling
There are different types of drills:

Repetition or imitation drills

Basically a teacher says a model and the students repeat it.
Example:
Prompt: I didn’t like the TV program, so I went to sleep.
Response: I didn’t like the TV program, so I went to sleep.

Substitution drills
Teachers use substitution drills to practice structures or vocabulary items. The idea is to
practice one or more words change during the drill.
Example:
Prompt: Leila is a very beautiful girl (intelligent).
Response: Leila is a very intelligent girl.
Prompt: John is helpful (modest).
Response: John is modest
Question and answer drills
Question and answer drills refer the use of questions as prompts. Students provide the
answer in a very controlled way.
Example:
Prompt: Is there a teacher in the classroom?
Response: Yes, there is.
Prompt: Are there any desks in the classroom?
Response: Yes, there are.
Or:
Prompt: What’s the matter?
Response: I have a (backache).
Prompt: What’s the matter?
Response: I have a (toothache).
Transformation drills
Students are given a structure to be transformed.
Example:
Prompt: Nancy made tea?
Response: Tea was made by Nancy.
Or:
Prompt: I like orange juice. She?
Response: She likes orange juice.
Or:
Prompt: New York is the capital of the USA. (not)
Response: New York is not the capital of the USA.

Chorus drills
Teacher asks the whole class to repeat the model all together.
What’s the problem with drills?
Drills are not appreciated in modern methods because:
They are not meaningful.
Focus is on accuracy.
They are mechanical.
They don’t convey much meaning
They are decontextualized.
Drills help fix structures in memory only for a short period of time.

Drills and fluency

As it can be seen from the examples above, drills focus on accuracy and are mechanical.
However, many teachers, think that drills may have some advantages in ELT, especially if
the focus is shifted from accuracy to fluency.
Drills may be exploited in learner-centered activities to help students gain fluency. In such
fluency-based drills, students may have a chance to try and say things without hesitations, at
the right speed, and without undue pauses. To reach that objective teachers provide short
formulaic language (or chunks) for students to practice. But instead of repeating these
chunks meaninglessly, students have to be given a context and enough time to process and
internalize these chunks at their own pace and using their own strategies. A kind of “mumble
drill” or “mutter drill”:
whereby learners repeat under their breath (i.e. sub-vocalise) the targeted segment, in their
own time, so as to get some kind of ownership of it.

Meaningful drills
Yes, drills can be made more meaningful. For instance, giving students choices in their
replies to prompts may provide more freedom and creativity. If you allow students to choose
from different options, this means that they have to think before they answer. Drills mustn’t
provide more control than is necessary (although they are by definition techniques that exert
some control over students’ production to minimize errors). This is an example of a
meaningful drill to practice the modal should:
Student 1: I’ve got a bad toothache.
Student 2: you should see a dentist.
Student 3: you should brush your teeth regularly.
Student 4: you shouldn’t eat candies.
Here is another example to practice could:
Prompt: I’m so bored.
Response 1: You could watch a movie.
Response 2: You could go jogging.
Response 3: You could hang out with your friends.
Response 4: You could go to a the theater.
Response 5: You could listen to your favorite music.
Response 6: You could read a book.
The above exchange is more meaningful because responses are unpredictable and they
give students opportunity for some creativity in spite of the controlled aspect of the drill.

Chain drills
Chain drills can be also made more meaningful by personalizing them:
Student 1: My name is Ann, and I mad about watching TV. What about you?
Student 2: My name is Clara, and I love surfing. And you?
Student 3: My name is John, and I like reading. What about you?
Student 4: My name is Lisa, and I am crazy about playing the guitar. And you?
Student 6: My name is Alan, and I am fond of …… And you?
Of course these drills may be made more challenging according to the level of the students.

Purposes
1. For the learners, drills can:
a. Provide for a focus on accuracy. Increased accuracy is one of the ways in which a
learner’s language improves so there is a need to focus on accuracy at certain stages of the
lesson or during certain task types.
b. Provide learners with intensive practice in hearing and saying particular word or phrases.
They can help learners get their tongues around difficult sounds or help them imitate
intonation that may be rather different from that of their first language.
c. Provide a safe environment for learners to experiment with producing the language. This
may help build confidence particularly among learners who are not risk takers.
d. Help students notice the correct form or pronunciation of a word phrase. Noticing or
consciousness rising of language is an important stage in developing language competence.
e. Provide an opportunity for learners to get immediate feedback on their accuracy in terms
of teacher or peer correction. Many learners want to be corrected.
f. Help memorization and atomisation of common language patterns and language chunks.
This may be particularly true for aural learners.
g. Meet students expectation, i.e. they may think drilling is an essential feature of language
classrooms.

2. For The Teacher:

a. Help in term of classroom management, enabling us to vary the pace of the lesson or to
get all learners involved.
b. Help the teacher recognize if new language is causing problems in terms of form or
pronunciation.

Advantages and Weaknesses

1. The Advantages of Drilling are:
Drilling help our learners memorise language by the teacher’s control. And the teacher can
correct any mistakes that students make and encourage them to concrete on difficulties at
the sometime.
2. The Weaknesses of Drilling
Drilling often make the students not vary creative. In all drills learners have no or vary little
choice over what is said so drills are form of very controlled practice. The teacher needs to
handle the drills, so that the students are not over used and they don’t go on far too long.
One of the problems about drills is that they are fairly monotonous.

. ​Principles
The following principles will help in planning and making drilling:
1. Realistic- don’t get students to practice sentences they would never actually say in real
life.
2. Meaningful-practice should take place within a context-if possible relating to students
interest.
3. Said with appropriate expression, e.g. surprise, impatience, enthusiasm, indifference, etc.
4. Used for only a minute or two. Use signs and pictures and sound prompts to give
briskness and interest to the practice.
5. Used as a first stage, quickly leading the way to other kinds of practice.
6. Vary the way in which you do drills to make the language more memorable.

THEORETICAL BASE
This technique is based on Audio-lingual Method. Richard and Rodgers (1986) said that a
number of learning principles in learning theory became the psychological foundations of
Audiolingualism and came to shape its methodological practice. Some principles are:
1. Foreign language learning is basically a process of mechanical habit formation. Goods
habits are formed by giving correct responses rather than by making mistakes. By
memorizing dialogues and performing pattern drills the chances of producing mistakes are
minimized. Language is verbal behaviour- that is the automatic production and
comprehension of utterances-and can be learned by inducing the students to do likewise.
2. Language skills are learned more effectively if the items to be learned in the target
language are presented in spoken form before they are seen in written form.
3. Analogy provides a better foundation for language learning than analysis. Analogy
involves the processes of generalization and discriminations. Drills can enable learners to
form correct analogies. Hence the approach to teach the teaching of grammar is essentially
inductive rather than deductive.
4. Teaching a language involves teaching aspects of the cultural system of the people who
speak the language.

THE COMPETENCY THAT IS DEVELOPED BY DRILLING

Drilling deals with Psychomotor process in which the competencies that are developed by
the technique are listening and speaking skills. Listening is one of the skills in which the
learners try to get information (word, phrase or sentence) from the teacher’s statements,
vocabularies or sentences. Then, they repeat it. That repetition is the realization of learners’
speaking skill and as the media for the teacher to check the learners’ pronunciationTHE

PROCEDURE
1. Students first hear a model dialogue (either read by the teacher or on tape) containing the
key structure that are the focus of the lesson. They repeat each line of the dialogue,
individually and in chorus. The teacher pays attention to pronunciation, intonation, and
fluency. Correction of mistakes of pronunciation or grammar is direct and immediate. The
dialogue is memorized gradually, line by line. A line may be broken down into several
phrases if necessary. The dialogue is read aloud in chorus, one half saying one speaker’s
part and one other half responding. The students do not consult their book throughout this
phase.
2. The dialogue is adapted to the students’ interest or situation, through changing certain key
words or phrases. This is acted out by the students.
3. Certain key structure from the dialogue are selected and use as the basis for pattern drills
of different kinds. These are first practiced in chorus and then individually. Some
grammatical explanation may be offered at this point, but this kept to an absolute minimum.
4. The students may refer to their textbook, and follow-up reading, writing, or vocabulary
activities based on the dialogue may be introduced.
5. Follow-up activities may take place in the language laboratory, where further dialogue and
drill work is carried out

​ ARGET
T
Elementary School Students
. TIME ALLOTMENT
2X 40 Minutes

Conclusion
In a nutshell, over drilling structures and vocabulary items may not be helpful in language
teaching. Drills must be integrated in meaningful activities if they are to be of any use.
Accuracy-based drills that focus on meaningless repetition have been discredited since the
advent of communicative language teaching. Nowadays, the role of controlled oral practice
is being reconsidered. The idea is to make such practice more communicative; the aim is to
reach fluency and natural communication.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cross, David. A Practical Handbook of Language Teaching. Phoenix ELT. Hertfordshire.
1995.
Haycraft, John. An Introduction to English Language Teaching. Longman Group Ltd. 1978
England.
Larsen, Diane. Freeman. Technique and Principle in Language Teaching. Oxford University
Press. 2000.
Richard, Jack C. Rodgers, Theodore S. Approach and Method in Language Teaching
Second edition. Cambridge University Press. 1986.