Drill and kill or drill and skill?

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One of the legacies of the audio-lingual approach to language teaching is the grammatical drill.
This type of task was commonplace in classrooms in the 1960s and 70s, before the communicative movement took hold. In fact, teachers devised all sorts of variations on the drill, many of which are listed in an influential pre-communicative era handbook by Wilga Rivers.* Many teachers still use this type of exercise now and then. But are they an unpleasant imposition upon reluctant learners, or a useful tool in the box? Before we look at an example of a drill, let's consider why they were so popular.

The audio-lingual approach was based on the tenets of the behaviourist movement in psychology where learning was said to be (at least in part) a matter of habits being "stamped in" or "internalised" through repeated practice. You can see why the idea was appealing. Repeated practice at an isolated skill would gradually become perfected to the point where it would become automatic, requiring little or no conscious  reflection. Just as we have to practice the micro-skills of any complex activity (playing golf, playing a musical instrument) to perfect one's abilities at it, so the same would apply to learning a language. This assumption in audio-lingualism has persisted to this day in a reformulated manner in the skill-acquisition hypothesis about language learning (e.g. Anderson).

The objection made to this view was that language learning, being apparently innate and natural to humans, is not learned in this way at all. Just as young children acquire a language without much conscious "practice" of the skills at all, so can adults learn a language along similar lines - by just hearing (and reading) comprehensible messages and interacting with them. In the world of academic research the zeitgeist moved away from skill acquisition to learning mainly through comprehension. Stephen Krashen was (and is) highly influential in this regard.

In classrooms that wasn't the case, however, and most teachers (in my experience) still believe that the skills of a language can be acquired through conscious practice, including by using repetitive drills and other exercises which require repeated practice of language, such as structured question and answer. Are they right?

First let's look at the drill which focuses on the use of the perfect tense in French.  The teacher (or pupil) would make a statement and the pupil (or partner) would respond with an altered version of the utterance.


1. Aujourd’hui je au football     (Hier j’ai joué au football)

2. Aujourd’hui je voyage en train

3. Aujourd’hui je finis mes devoirs.​

4. Aujourd’hui je choisis un biscuit.​

5. Aujourd’hui je vends mon vélo.

6. Aujourd’hui je perds mon portable.

7. Aujourd’hui il écoute le prof.

8. Aujourd’hui elle chante dans la chorale.

9. Aujourd’hui on finit à trois heures trente.

10. Aujourd’hui nous dansons dans la rue.

In doing this exercise the pupil hears some comprehensible (though uninteresting) input, focuses on the form of the verb and then uses their knowledge of the perfect tense of the verb to provide an answer. Some minor mental gymnastics ensue, involving recalling the sounds required to produce the past tense version of the verb,  and an answer is produced pretty quickly. Once the examples have been worked through, variations can be applied for example, the teacher can ask pupils to change one or more elements in the sentence, e.g. pupils would have to change the complement of the verb, add a second element, an extra verbs or an alternative time phrase to start with. These extra elements provide extra challenge and opportunities for differentiation in the classroom.

I've noticed that by doing this type of drill, students are engaging with language in a similar way to with sentence builder frames, by reusing words and chunks repeatedly in a comprehensible way. (Note that with sentence builders manipulation of the verb form is not usually needed.)  In this way, one would hope that some of the chunks would go into long term memory for quick recall in the future. This is what is meant by internalisation. To me this continues to make some sense, as long as this type of task is just one arrow in the quiver. Pupils often enjoy repetitive exercises where the aim is clear and where short-term mastery is achievable. This leads to self-efficacy which we know id so important for motivation.

The mystery remains this, however. How do we know that consciously practised exercises like this enter long term memory? How do we know that what is "learned" becomes "acquired"? The answer is that we don't, with some researchers believing that there is no "interface" between conscious learning and acquisition. Others believe that there is something in skill acquisition, even if it's not the predominant way we pick up languages in the classroom.

So should you consider using drills? Well I would still stand by them if used in moderation and if you are looking for alternatives to sentence builders, narrow listening and reading tasks, gap-fill or classic question and answer. They make for handy lesson starters or fillers (no pun intended) and can reinforce knowledge and skill with new language patterns. But in any case, do reflect critically on their value and reject them if they don't suit your view of acquisition.

For further information https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/drilling-1

* Wilga Rivers' book is Teaching Foreign Language Skills (1981) - if you can find a used copy somewhere, it's scholarly and well worth reading.