Drill and Practice Software – Old Fashioned Method in Modern Days?

11Nov08

In this week’s class we worked through the online-session’s practical by developing different posters in groups. Our blogging task was then to create an entry about one of these posters.

I chose the second task since it seemed necessary to me to somehow support the old fashioned way of teaching through “Drill and Practice” a little bit. It appeared to me that this method is easily forgotten or even discredited, so that it might need a little closer attention.

Task 2: Why is drill & practice software still distributed? Do you think it is useful?

First of all, I have to say that since Drill and Practice Software is still distributed, it is quite obvious that it might still be relevant for today’s English classes, so let’s find out “how”, “when”, and “why”.

The group which prepared this poster did quite a good job in seperating the pros and cons of Drill and Practice software. I will use their outline in the following comment.

Pros:

• Time Saving – I do agree on the point that students might learn faster with Drill and Practice Software than with some other methods/devices (plain vocab lists, worksheets etc.), just for the fun part of sitting in front of a computer, seeing pictures and being able to click and scroll and type and rewrite. And, without a doubt, there is an immense learning effect if you are able to see, hear, read and write (all at the same time) what you are expected to learn. When it comes to time in-class I do not consider this method to be very time saving. Since in most schools the whole class has to switch rooms in order to have computer-access I would suppose that the whole period will have to be dedicated to the software-exercise(s) when just a few minutes would have been enough using another method (but would it have been as good?). It does take some time to get the students seated, to start the computers and programs, to introduce the pupils to the software and tasks and to get them started. Depending on what you aim for as a teacher, this might be an adequate expenditure of time but it might also – when used incorrect or not thought through (media competence, lesson structure!) – be a waste of time.
  
• Easy Access – see arguments above.
  
• Vocabulary Practice & Basic Grammar Practice - I totally agree with these two advantages. Drill and Practice Software definitely provides a great and easy way to help students to memorize new (and revise old) lexical items and collocations and practice basic grammar rules (over and over again). To be honest, I believe this method is (one of) the best to train these skills since they do need constant repetition in order to be memorized, learned, and finally adopted into the active (and effective and long-lasting) lexicon and language use.
  
• Basic Knowledge Achievement – Overall, the arguments mentioned above do also adhere to this point made.
  

Cons

• Lack of Context – Of course, the usage of pure vocabulary lists does lack context. But when I recall the Drill and Practice Software I used at school, it was always nicely designed so that the students did have a context. Just imagine a picture of a classroom where students have to name all the furnishing and class room supplies, such as “desk”, “chair”, “exercise book”, “ruler”, etc., doesn’t that help to 1. memorize the vocab and 2. learn them context-related?
  
• Lack of Application Abilities/Possibilities – There is no doubt that neither the Drill and Practice Method, nor the according software should be used as the exclusive, every day teaching method. Therefore the sporadic use of this technology, when teaching vocabulary, grammatical structures, geographical details, history dates etc., is adequate, possible and -in my opinion- advisable.
  
• Only useful for a certain type of learner age/preference – This argument is surely true. But doesn’t it apply to almost all methods used in school? Learning with vocabulary lists, Grammar-rules-worksheets, translation exercises, listening tasks, or roleplays also only apply to a certain learner type. It is the mixture of all of them, which addresses the whole class. There will always be certain students that do not respond to a certain method while others prefer it. Therefore a teacher has to offer a variety of teaching and learning methods in order to achieve the best learning result for all of his or her students.
  
• Financial Aspects – Without a doubt either the school or the (ambitious) teacher has to be able to affort such a software. It might be more expensive than copied handouts, plain paper or chalk. But since it is very useful and computer training should be taught in every school (and computers should therefore be available), it might not be an impossible purchase. If there aren’t enough/any computers available – that would be another topic and Drill and Practice Software should be the least problem in this case.
  

Summary

In my opinion, Drill and Practice Software can come in handy, especially in the Foreign Language Classroom, when learning/teaching

• vocabulary (esp. word-fields)
• grammar (basic rules)
• history (dates, places)
• geography (former colonies, cities etc.).

Of course, Drill and Practice (software) should not be the only method used in the EFL classroom, but it should be included in the method pool of an English teacher. Used in order to support the learning process and fill the gaps of other methods (which do not believe in memorizing and numerous repetitions), Drill and Practice can do good work for the student’s language learning achievements. Just as any other method or exercise, this software should be chosen wisely and well-founded since it is not suitable for every mandatory topic in the English class curriculum.

It might be old-fashioned and other methods might sound more modern, mature, cosmopolitan, enduring, or thought through, but there is no way around the Drill and Practice method in today’s EFL classrooms – and we should be happy to have at least some adequate and interesting software in order to make memorizing easier and more fun for our students.

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