The behaviourist approach:
audiolingualism, drilling as habit formation and structuralism in language learning and teaching
Choice by the learner of vocabulary is needed to permit individual control over the meaning of the information conveyed. When this is not permitted, there is a danger that all that is being practised is pronunciation. Drills which rely heavily on automatic responses without reference to appropriate contexts may give rise to little or no naturalistic speech.
[Question set by David Jones on the RSA Course in Stockholm, 1981]
Meaningless drills: the drawbacks
The artificiality of the stimulus used in a drill may give rise to a kind of "structurespeech", characterised by a lack of genuine interaction. No information is conveyed that is not already known to the participants.
The content presented through "meaningless drills" may teach learners that listening is a waste of time. Only hearing is required in order to complete the drill. Language learning may therefore be presented as a tedious process rather than as meaningful communication.
Behaviourists deliberately minimised the role of understanding in order to focus attention on language structure. For example: "Don't worry about the meaning of these minimal pairs (watch/wash, batch/bash). I want you to get your tongue round the sounds."
When using apparently "meaningless drills", such as minimal-pair exercises for pronunciation, teachers should make sure that learners understand why a particular feature of language is being isolated for practice. Students need to understand the rationale for focusing atomistically on a feature of a word, sentence or paragraph. This might involve practising difficult consonant clusters, diphthongs or contrasts such as watching and washing. Communication can sometimes fail at the motor-skill level, for example because of poor pronunciation of particular phonemes.
Many of these drawbacks can be avoided by using a high proportion of meaningful drills. Drills containing anachronistic vocabulary items such as "ducks", "geese" and "sheep" are of limited value unless such vocabulary is relevant to the learners' needs. Drills should contain a substantial proportion of vocabulary that meets learners' communicative needs.
Good visual prompts, such as pictures, can establish useful application relationships. The drills in the Streamline Departures Speechwork series provide good examples, since most of them have a meaningful context. Implication relationships are also well exploited. For example:
S: Joe Freezer is strong.
R: But Tim Lyons is _____.Substitution, mutation and transformation should not be discarded as ways of practising familiar vocabulary in different patterns. The important point is that the vocabulary should be carefully selected and presented before learners are asked to practise the patterns.
Meaningful drills: the potential
Robert O'Neill is the author of some of the most effective language laboratory drills ever constructed. The quality of these exercises depends on a clear understanding of the purposes served by different types of drills, together with sensitivity to situational context and naturalistic conditions of use.
More importantly, learners using meaningful drills are required to make choices. They therefore have to demonstrate some conceptual awareness and understanding of meaning by discriminating between different possible responses.
Robert O'Neill's success with the Kernel series [see Kernel Lessons Plus: Laboratory Drills/Tapescript, Longman Group Ltd, © Eurozentren, 1974] stems from his interest both in the generative function of language represented by TG kernels and in its personal and creative use.
The following sequence illustrates the important stages in constructing a good meaningful drill:
Step 1: Contextualisation. Present the language pattern in a context which suggests a basic use for it.
Step 2: Comprehension. Use comprehension questions based on the short introductory text to make sure that learners understand the essential features of the context.
Step 3: Kernel analysis.
K1 I object to something.
K2 I share my room with the children.
K3 I object to sharing my room with the children.The learner is now fully prepared to manipulate the pattern as part of a drill.
Step 4: Provide further K2s. The drill can now develop from the contextualised pattern:
You are an au-pair girl. You don't like your work. You have to clean the toilets, so you say:
I object to cleaning the toilets.
S: You scrub the floors.
R: ...S: You look after the baby.
R: ...S: You wash his nappies.
R: ...Far from being a collection of unrelated fragments, Robert O'Neill's prompts follow a sequence. The drill has something of the continuity of a real series of utterances. It is centred both on a structural pattern and on the communicative function of complaining.
Step 5: Creative substitution. The final stage of the sequence allows the learner to use the same structural pattern more creatively:
"You are unhappy with your job. Tell your boss some of the things you object to doing."
At this stage, the learner supplies approximately half of the vocabulary, making the activity considerably more personal and creative.
Other landmark materials from the 1970s
A decade when meaningful drills became more prominent than meaningless ones.
Oral exercises have the advantage of setting a pace for learners while giving them important opportunities to practise English syntax aloud.
Cue for a Drill by Shiona Harness and John Eastwood [Oxford, 1976], suitable for practice at elementary to intermediate levels.
Even a single copy of this book can provide excellent examples of cues such as pictures, menus, timetables and other simple texts encountered in everyday life. These cues can easily be reproduced on a classroom blackboard. They are linked to areas of syntax and grammar such as verb tenses and the formation of adverbs from adjectives.
The book provides a reasonable challenge for learners and succeeds in its principal purpose: practising grammar orally.
Tense Drills by Duncan Shoebridge and L. G. Giggins [Longman, 1970].
One copy of this book retained by the teacher is sufficient to provide the practice needed. The exercises involve learners in actually speaking English. Too much grammar is practised passively through materials which require little more than reading, writing and checking answers.
With Tense Drills, probably best suited to classes of no more than twelve learners, everybody can speak to everybody else in a variety of combinations. The teacher needs sufficient students to form groups such as speakers A, B, C, D and E. It is therefore a class resource rather than a one-to-one teaching material.
The book is intended for intermediate learners and uses syntactic practice to introduce and recycle useful vocabulary. For example:
A: What does a greengrocer do?
B: A greengrocer sells fruit and vegetables.A: What does a pilot do?
B: A pilot flies planes.
The theoretical background to pattern drills
Some Experimental Data on the Value of Studying Foreign Languages, by D. Starch (1915), exemplifies a behaviourist approach to language learning. The central idea is that imitation and repetition of correct expressions are more effective in forming correct habits than grammatical knowledge.
Verbal Behaviour (1957), by B. F. Skinner, assumes that behaviour consists of conditioned and associated responses. Learning depends on the frequency with which responses are repeated, consistent reinforcement of correct responses, and careful sequencing of stimulus-response bonds in order to minimise the possibility of mistakes.
Breaking learning down into easily assimilated, minimal steps makes it possible to control and condition responses and gradually build them into a behaviour pattern.
Language (1933) by Leonard Bloomfield is primarily concerned with form rather than meaning or function. Associated with behaviourism, and influential in the language syllabuses widely used in the 1960s, was the theory of structural linguistics.
Behaviourism, structuralism and the repeated assertion that learners learn to speak a second language by speaking it all contributed to the design of audiolingual courses.
Key figures in the history of drills include:
- The Principles of Language Study, Harold E. Palmer (1921)
- Correct Your English, B. Mendelssohn and J. W. Palmer [Longman, 1940]
- English Pattern Practice: Establishing the Patterns as Habits, Charles Fries and Richard Lado (1958)
The Language Laboratory and Language Learning, Julian Dakin [Longman, 1973]. Dakin coined the expression "meaningless drills" to describe a form of pattern practice inspired by ideas found in many of the works listed above.
The Audio-Lingual Method advocated "mimicry-memorization" in pattern drills, in which the role of understanding was minimised as far as possible. The main emphasis was placed on the mechanical production of utterances as language forms and on the development of automatic responses — in other words, good language habits.
Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching, Jack C. Richards and Theodore S. Rodgers [Cambridge Language Teaching Library, 2014].
A History of English Language Teaching, A. P. R. Howatt with H. G. Widdowson — 2nd revised edition (2004), or 1st edition (1984).
Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching: Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Applied Linguistic Research, H. H. Stern [Oxford Applied Linguistics, 1983].