Teacher Discussion Forums

[simone.brazil]

"In referring to structural pattern drills, Paulston and Bruder (1976) used three categories: mechanical, meaningful and communicative." Is irregular verbs drill a mechanical drill? I know that as teachers we should get as far as possible from these kinds of drills, but again, is it useful for the students to use mechanical drill as a meaning of teaching irregular verbs? Are there good techniques to teach irregular verbs in different tenses?

[Madeline]

I did a little research on drilling and found that according to Haycraft (36: 1978), after presentation and explanation of the new structure, students may used controlled practice in saying useful and correct sentence patterns in combination with appropriate vocabulary. These patterns are known as oral drills. They can be inflexible: students often seem to master a structure in drilling, but are then incapable of using it in other contexts. Furthermore, drills have several types in form:

They are: Repetition drill, substitution drill, question and answer drill, transformation, change, expansion and communicative drills.

Not sure if it applies to learning irregular verbs.