Today we are going to talk about drilling. What are the aims, advantages and disadvantages of drilling? And also we’ll have a look at several drilling types : repetition drill, emotional drill, substitution drill, transformation drill, back chain drill and expansion drill.
Drilling is a technique that has been used in foreign language classrooms for many years.
Drilling means listening to a model, provided by the teacher, or a tape or another student and repeating what is heard. Harmer states that drilling is mechanical way of 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.
Usually, after presentation and explanation of the new structure, students may use controlled practice in saying useful and correct sentence patterns in combination with appropriate vocabulary. These patterns are known as oral drills.

Now I think you are convinced enough that we have to use drills in our classroom. But everything has its advantages and downsides and drilling is not an exception.

Think about positive and negative sides of using drills in your classroom.

1. The Advantages of Drilling are:
Drilling helps our learners memorise language by the teacher’s control. And the teacher can correct any mistakes that students make.
2. The Weaknesses of Drilling are:
Drilling often makes the students not very creative. In all drills learners have no or very little choice over what is said so drills are a 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.
Now you can see the full picture of the issue and let’s look at some drilling types and how to use them in your classes.

The Repetition Drill
The teacher says models and the students repeat it.
The Emotional drill.
You can make drilling more dramatic by asking students to say a sentence in an emotional way.
The Substitution Drill
Substitution drill can be used to practise different structures or vocabulary items.
The Transformation Drill
The teacher gives students a certain kind of sentence pattern, an affirmative sentence for example. Students are asked to transform this sentence into a negative sentence.
The Backchain Drill
The teacher reads the last part of the sentence then works up to a full sentence. A nice variation the traditional drill.
The Expansion Drill
This drill is used when a long line dialogue is giving students trouble. The teacher breaks down the line into several parts. The students repeat a part of the sentence, usually the last phrase of the line. Then following the teacher’s cue, the students expand what they are repeating part by part until they are able to repeat the entire line.