Mechanical Drills

<b> Forum for the discussion of all aspects of bilingual education </b>

Moderators: Dimitris, maneki neko2, Lorikeet, Enrico Palazzo, superpeach, cecil2, Mr. Kalgukshi2

Post Reply
simone.brazil
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu Dec 01, 2011 1:35 am

Mechanical Drills

Post by simone.brazil » Sat Jun 02, 2012 10:03 pm

"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
Posts: 25
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 1:20 am

Post by Madeline » Mon Jun 25, 2012 9:34 pm

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.

Post Reply