1Minimal resources: drilling

Author: Phillip Kerr

Level: starter/beginner, advanced, elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate Type:
teaching notes
Tips and ideas for using drilling in the classroom
After a sudden surge of popularity in the 1970s, drilling has become very unpopular in some teaching
contexts. As a classroom technique, it was associated with theories of behaviourism. (See
Audiolingualism in TEFL, EFL, ESL for more on behaviourism.) It wasnt long before behaviourism
was rubbished as an adequate theory of language acquisition, so the decline in the fashionability of
drilling was inevitable.
But drilling existed in the classroom long before Skinner and others developed their behaviourist
theories, and many classroom activities that are popular now are really drills in disguise guessing
games, information gaps, personalized grammar practice, jazz chants, etc. See Scott Thornburys article
Photocopy-free grammar practice for more examples.

The point of drills

If you get someone to repeat something often enough, theyll usually get it right in the end.
Unfortunately, theres no guarantee that theyll get it right the next day or the day after that. If we drill
the third person singular s day after day, lesson after lesson, some students will still forget to use it
when they attempt to communicate more freely. Further drilling just isnt going to help them! Practice
makes perfect (sort of), but other types of activities may be more appropriate than drilling to help
students with persistent errors. The primary value of drill techniques lies in the opportunity they provide
to draw students attention to elements of the language. They also offer a non-threatening chance for
students to get their tongues literally - round the sounds and rhythms of a strange foreign language,
and to hear themselves saying something. It may not be real communication, but not everybody wants to
communicate all the time. There is much non-communicative linguistic play in first language acquisition
(games like itsy-bitsy-spider and songs like ba-ba-black sheep) and this play serves a clear linguistic
and cognitive purpose. So long as the purpose of drilling is clear in our minds, it can also be helpful to
our students.

Basic drills
The most basic kind of drill is a repetition drill and the key to its success is for the students to know
exactly what it is they should be repeating. A simple word like simple probably only needs to be
modelled once (or twice) by the teacher, before the students are asked to repeat. But a more
complicated utterance like minimal resources may require more substantial modelling. It may be helpful
for the students if we point out the word stress on each word. It may be helpful, in some way, to show
that the s in resources is pronounced /z/, and the re- at the beginning of the word is pronounced with
a short /i/. If we dont highlight these features in some way, the students may not know what it is they
are supposed to be saying. It is through this process that we can encourage the students to notice
elements of the language that they might not otherwise have noticed.
Drill management

People tend to remember things better when they are feeling positive about what they are doing. If
drilling becomes robotic, unnatural or boring, it will be counterproductive. Its a time when students
need to be alert and concentrated, so some times of the day are better than others.
Avoid nominating students in predictable circles
Dont overdo individual repetition in large classes
Spring occasional surprises
Attention is positive, but tension is counterproductive, so remember that you can give students a
break by getting them to mumble drill (repeating to themselves or to a partner, but at their
own time and pace).
Flash cards always help keep attention, but if youre like me, you lose or forget them when they
are needed. Fortunately, there are other ways of providing variety.
Get students to repeat words or phrases very quickly or very slowly.Get students to say things
with a particular emotion: :) or :(, or with a variety of accents, very loudly or very softly or any
combination of these.
For more on the management of drill routines, see Scott Thornburys article on Dialogue
building.

To write or not to write?

Some teachers always write a word or a phrase on the board before they drill it. Some teachers never
write anything on the board before they drill it. Theres something to be said for both approaches. Some
students assume that when theyve seen a written word (and copied it down), they know it. They may
think that pronunciation is not very important (perhaps pronunciation is not tested in their school) and
pay little attention to any drilling that is taking place. For students like this, it may be a good idea to hold
off providing the written form until youve drawn their attention to features of pronunciation.

Some students, on the other hand, may feel very anxious if they dont see a written form. Its probably
better to allay their anxiety than to insist they do something they dont want to do. In either case, the
important thing to remember is that students need to understand the meaning of what they are hearing or
repeating. Babies may derive some benefit from saying Itsy-bitsy-spider without having a clue what it
means for most other learners, its a pointless waste of time.

Gesture

We all have a range of gestures that we use to communicate a host of meanings in class: me/ you, here/
there, now/ in the past, good/ bad, to/ from, on/ under, together, silence, come here/ get out, loud/ quiet,
I cant hear/ say it again / youre crazy!, etc. Using gesture will help a teacher keep a classs attention
focused drilling is invariably a very teacher-focused event. Experiment using your hands to indicate
stressed syllables/ words or the elision of two words. Sometimes, your hands may be helpful to beat the
stress and some teachers use their fingers as a correction tool. You may want to use gestures to indicate
who is to speak, and to whom, or simply to tell students to be quiet and listen. Listening is such an
important part of drill work that it can be helpful to minimize explanatory teacher talk. Gestures can be
used to make the teachers models or corrections more prominent.
Correction

Drilling works on the premise that its better to show someone how to do something before you ask
them to do it. It isnt the only way to learn something, but it can certainly help some people some of the
time. With this in mind, we need to take time showing students how to say something modelling,
highlighting, etc. If this stage of drilling is properly exploited, correction (after choral or individual
repetition) can be seen as an opportunity to re-model or re-highlight. Try to avoid putting individual
students under the spotlight of individual repetition too soon make sure there has been ample
opportunity to get tongues round the language in the anonymous security of choral (or mumble)
repetition first. Correction works better if it is very specific, but never forget that some things are very
resistant to immediate acquisition. Try teaching the French vowel sounds /u/ and /y/ (as in poule / hen
and pull / pullover) to a typical group of English learners! People have been correcting me for over 20
years, and I still get it wrong. For some learners, there are features of English pronunciation that seem
equally insurmountable. Most of these learners will appreciate a little praise for whatever progress they
make.