# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to Teach Using English Language Drills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How to Teach Using English Language Drills. Here are a number of different types of drills that you can practice with your students learning English. Understand the purpose of drills. There are a lot of good reason for using English...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
by Tara Arntsen 282,641 views

After introducing new vocabulary words, grammar points, or sentence structures, you have to drill them with your class.

There are many ways to drill new material. Using a variety of drilling methods in your classes will help make this portion of the lesson more interesting and keep students focused.

How To Proceed

1. Choral Repetition
Choral repetition is a commonly used method of drilling. Students simply have to repeat words or phrases after you. This is a good method because it means that students are given excellent model pronunciation immediately before they are asked to respond. Going through vocabulary this way many times in a single lesson will be boring for your students and they will be less inclined to perform well. Break up the monotony by changing the speed or volume you use and have students change their responses accordingly. Using this method, students are not called on individually to pronounce words therefore you will need to check individual pronunciation and comprehension separately. Integrating these checks into your drill activities will keep students alert because they will never know when you may call on them.

2. Drilling with Flashcards
Drilling using flashcards can be useful as well. In the introduction, show students both the image and word sides of each flashcard. When you start drilling words for the first time, show students the word side of the flashcard so they can practice reading and pronouncing it. Later on, rather than show students the word you want them to pronounce, show them the image. This will help check their comprehension of the material. With flashcards, you can also challenge your students when they become more familiar with certain vocabulary by flipping through the cards at a faster rate.

3. Comprehension
Asking for volunteers or calling on students to give you a synonym, antonym, or translation of a new vocabulary word will check individual comprehension. It is always nice to ask for volunteers as opposed to calling on students individually but generally a volunteer will be more confident in his answer so this will not properly show whether or not the class understands the material. When you find it necessary to single out particular students who are not participating in drill activities, calling on them for answers is an easy method of focusing their attention on the lesson. Doing comprehension checks is also a good way to break up the drill activities a bit.

4. Drilling in Pairs
As material becomes more familiar, you may want to conduct short pair activities where a student's comprehension is tested by his partner. To do this with a vocabulary list for instance, have student A read the translation of each word in random order while the student B says the word in English. Student A can then place a checkmark next to all the words student B got correct and then the students can switch roles. With this method students can check each other and have visual proof of how well they performed afterwards which they can refer to when practicing material on their own or preparing for exams. Conducting an activity such as this on a regular basis will help students review vocabulary often and should not take more than five minutes even with fifteen to twenty vocabulary words. It may still be necessary to practice using choral repetition before performing pair activities so that students are reminded of the proper pronunciation of the vocabulary.

5. Games
Breaking your classroom up into sections where each section says one portion of a new structure is another way of drilling material. In small classes you can conduct some drilling activities in a circle. The more variation there is to an activity, the more students have to pay attention but it is best to start off with the simplest, easiest variation of a game and build on it as opposed to trying to explain a complex activity from the very beginning. Challenging students but not overwhelming them is important in maintaining their attention and participation.

Drilling is generally not the most fun part of teaching or learning English but it is an essential step when learning new material. Varying your approach can make it more enjoyable and encourage students to participate more fully.

P.S. If you enjoyed this article, please help spread it by clicking one of those sharing buttons below. And if you are interested in more, you should follow our Facebook page where we share more about creative, non-boring ways to teach English.

Get the Entire BusyTeacher Library:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to Drill: Drilling Activities for Your English Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
by Tara Arntsen 282,641 views After introducing new vocabulary words, grammar points, or sentence structures, you have to drill them with your class. There are many ways to drill new material. Using a variety of drilling methods in your classes will help make this portion of the lesson more interesting and keep students focused.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Based on the Behaviourist view that learning to speak a foreign language - like other skills - was simply a question of correct habit formation, it was thought that repeating phrases correctly lots of times would lead to mastery of the language.

Nowadays we know that language learning is not like this - it is a far more complex and creative process - and language is a lot more than just a list of structures to be memorised.

An approach based mainly or only on language drills is unlikely to find many adherents today. However, drilling remains a useful technique in the classroom if it is used appropriately.

What drills can be useful for

What drilling is
At its simplest, drilling means listening to a model, provided by the teacher, or a tape or another student, and repeating what is heard. This is a repetition drill, a technique that is still used by many teachers when introducing new language items to their students. The teacher says (models) the word or phrase and the students repeat it.

Other types of drill include substitution drills, or question and answer drills. Substitution drills can be used to practise different structures or vocabulary items (i.e. one or more words change during the drill).
Example:
Prompt: 'I go to work. He?'~
Response: 'He goes to work.'

In question and answer drills the prompt is a question and the response the answer. This is used for practising common adjacency pairs such as 'What's the matter?', 'I've got a (headache).' or 'Can I have a (pen) please?', 'Yes, here you are.' The words in brackets here can be substituted during the drill.

In all drills learners have no or very little choice over what is said so drills are a form of very controlled practice. There is one correct answer and the main focus is on 'getting it right' i.e. on accuracy. Drills are usually conducted chorally (i.e. the whole class repeats) then individually. There is also the possibility of groups or pairs of students doing language drills together.

What drills can be useful for
For the learners, drills can:

Provide for a focus on accuracy. Increased accuracy (along with increased fluency and complexity) 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.

Provide learners with intensive practice in hearing and saying particular words 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.

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.

Help students notice the correct form or pronunciation of a word or phrase. Noticing or consciousness raising of language is an important stage in developing language competence.

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.

Help memorisation and automisation of common language patterns and language chunks. This may be particularly true for aural learners.

Meet student expectations i.e. They may think drilling is an essential feature of language classrooms.

For the teacher, drills can:

Help in terms of classroom management, enabling us to vary the pace of the lesson or to get all learners involved.

Help us recognise if new language is causing problems in terms of form or pronunciation.

What we should drill
At all levels we should drill vocabulary or chunks of language that cause pronunciation problems.

At low levels students are still getting used to the sounds of English and need plenty of opportunity to get their tongues around them so it is likely that drilling will be used more.

Sounds that either do not exist in their L1 or occur differently.

Consonant clusters and weak forms may also cause difficulty - for example in words like vegetable, comfortable.

At the phrase level intonation, stress, and weak forms often cause learner difficulties and at higher levels there may still be problems with these aspects of pronunciation. Phrases such as, 'If I'd known you were coming I'd have stayed at home' are difficult to say.

Intonation patterns that are crucial to meaning may also be usefully practised through drilling, for example tag questions (which ask for confirmation or which are genuine questions) or expressions like 'You could have told me it was his birthday!' (as a rebuke).

If we believe that drilling helps our learners memorise language, we should also drill useful and common language chunks to help them internalise them. This would include many common phrases such as,

Drilling of structures per se seems much less likely to be useful because of the mental processing that is required to apply grammar rules accurately, particularly if it is a new piece of language for the learners.

When we should drill
For drills to be meaningful, learners need to understand what they are being asked to say. Monotonous chanting of decontextualised language is not useful to anyone.

This means that work on the meaning of the language must come before drilling.

Drilling can be comfortably and effectively incorporated into many types of lessons - whether you use a PPP model or a task-based approach, for example.

Drilling may follow a language focus stage particularly if you are dealing with spoken language. It may be too much, however, to expect learners to get it right immediately so you may want to introduce drilling later for remedial purposes. Or you may do it after a fluency task as a correction strategy.

It shouldn't be used too much however; if boredom sets in it is unlikely to be useful at all.

In Drilling 2 we'll look at some ways of making drilling more creative, productive and fun for students.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Based on the Behaviourist view that learning to speak a foreign language - like other skills - was simply a question of correct habit formation, it was thought that repeating phrases correctly lots of times would lead to mastery of the language.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Drilling

This article is about drilling in English language teaching, a technique that is still being used by many teachers although it has been discredited in modern methods. The article will try to discuss the following points:

1. definition of drilling,

2. types of drills,

3. the reasons why drilling is now discredited,

4. drilling and fluency.

What is drilling?

Drilling refers to a type of audio lingual technique based on students repeating a model provided by the teacher. The focus is on accuracy rather than fluency. They are used to practice:

This technique is still used by many teachers in many parts of the world although the theory -behaviorism- which is the basis of such a technique was discredited a long time ago.

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.

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.

External links:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This article is about drilling in English language teaching, a technique that is still being used by many teachers although it has been discredited in modern methods. The article will try to discuss the following points: definition of drilling, types of drills, the reasons why drilling is now discredited, drilling and fluency.