I'll drill you(??).

I was studying about Teaching Methology of English.

There were something similar that we have learned from Jason.

It was about drill.

Drill was about what we have learned from our mid or high school teachers.

It was just a kind of boring drill.

The book said that by just repeating, students can learn English.

So I just closed the book.

Studying with the book, I thought I would be a boring teacher.

I wanna become an interesting teacher.

Our books just tell us some boring, uneffective way to teach English.

Don't you agree with me??

I think your idea is right! If you will study with the book, you are likely to be a boring teacher. However, I'm just worring about your grade at the course!!!
"When in Rome, do as the Romans do", I guess, this the possible answer that you will get if you complain to your teacher!! So......!!!!! Drop the course!!!

Through this course, I am learning more activities. Especially, in speaking class, activities are very important part to motivate students to speak and practice. However, I guess probably other classmates agree with this that creating new, effective activities is hard, but that's one of tasks we should do. I hope all of us will produce new activities until finishing this course and share together.

I also thought drill is just listen and repeat as I did in high school. I realized that there are so many method to notice, drill, practice enunciation and discourse from this class. As my major is not English education, I have never thought about that before. However, I think I have to be ashamed of the fact, because I'm studying English and teaching English though.. I also think unless teachers change, students will not change and unless teachers study, students neither do.

Byung-keun Son wrote:I think your idea is right! If you will study with the book, you are likely to be a boring teacher. However, I'm just worring about your grade at the course!!!
"When in Rome, do as the Romans do", I guess, this the possible answer that you will get if you complain to your teacher!! So......!!!!! Drop the course!!!

Hi Samuel and Byungkeun,

Firstly - thank you Samuel for bringing up an excellent issue to think about in this forum. Great to see!

Byungkeun, I think you might have slightly misunderstood Samuel's thoughts. I don't think he was disagreeing with what I'd taught him about drills - he was disagreeing with the advice in a teaching methodology book that said listening and repeating drills just by itself would lead to good speaking ability.

Just to re-cap my thoughts about including drills in your materials and methodology:

- They can be highly useful, especially in terms of encouraging non-confident large classrooms to open up and start having the language come out of their mouths (helping to overcome affective factors), as well as becoming a source of independent pair work practice that is easy for learners to understand and apply on their own;

- They should always come after meaningful, situation-based input that learners could listen to and 'notice' various skills and language from first;

- They should feature language constructions and vocabulary from the original 'noticing' input, and should never present non-contextualized language just for the sake of itself (as in, the drill should complement the overall skills being shown and facilitated, not be the skill itself...);

- They should feature variability in terms of other language and vocabulary that can be slotted in, to widen students' practice and familiarity with the language, but also to show other uses that the sentence patterns can be put to;

- They should be applied in fun and dynamic ways to motivate and interest the students, and above all get them very active and confident with smaller chunks of meaningful language.


I'm pretty sure the book Samuel was referring to does not cast drills in the same light. I think (or hope) Samuel was pointing out that through this coursework he has started to see the teaching of speaking skills in a new light, and that while drills can be a good part of our broader approach, they cannot be the approach on their own.


Have I got this right, Samuel?


Oh, and by the way, you shouldn't feel like you can't challenge a teacher over a methodological principle... If the teacher truly knows his/her stuff, he/she will be able to quite ably show you the rationale behind a principle, or admit when it is flawed and be thankful to students for demonstrating that.

I for one would never (EVER!) reduce a student's grade for being thoughtful and daring to think outside the box. If anything (and the challenge was a well thought out one), I would be likely to do the opposite and give them an addition to their grade!


Take care and see you in class soon,

~ Jason


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I have a couple of other points to add here about drills and the particular language teaching method they sprang from (the Audiolingual Method, or ALM).

First, the basic concept of a drill based on meaningful input is not entirely artificial or unnatural in first language learning. I've seen my little boy doing it with his English while he is playing or thinking while he reads his books.

He will say a phrase he has heard from conversation or a story and repeat it to himself seemingly endlessly. Often he does it until I repeat it back to him. He could be showing me that he knows how to say something, or it could be his way of naturally seeking confirmation that he is saying it right or saying something interesting and meaningful (or a combination of all these things).

He then naturally moves on to a stage where he wants to change the phrase or sentence and apply it in new ways. Instead of saying "On Monday, the caterpillar ate through one apple" over and over, I've heard him say:

On Monday, the caterpillar ate through one apple
On Monday, the caterpillar ate through one red apple
On Monday, the caterpillar ate through one BIG red apple!

or:

On Monday, the caterpillar ate through one apple
On Monday, the caterpillar ate through one FIRE ENGINE! (giggle)
On Monday, the caterpillar ate through one APPLE TREE! (giggle giggle)

He's clearly experimenting with his language at a variety of levels, using the initial 'chunk' he has become familiar with. He also knows exactly what he is saying and what it could mean.

So I guess there are some grounds for saying that drill work does have connections to natural language acquisition processes, so long as it incorporates the other elements involved in that process (initial context and input, repetition for familiarity and accuracy, and fun experimentation when the learner knows - or can guess - the meaning behind the new utterances).


On another tangent, you can find out some more information about drills and substitution drills (and the audiolingual method) on my methodology site:

http://www.englishraven.com/method_audioling.html

I wrote it several years ago, but you may find the information and my opinions interesting...


Best wishes,

~ Jason


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