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Language learning has seen different phases depending on the methodologies, theories and needs of specific periods. Different currents have privileged different techniques to improve student memorization. This is the case of drilling, greatly used by the audio-lingual method. With the rise of the communicative approach, its efficacy has been questioned. However, many teachers all over the world still use this technique in their classroom. This leads us to ask ourselves the question whether drilling is an effective teaching method. In order to address this question, I will base my reflection on three factors; the age of the learners, their level and the phases of a lesson. In each part, I will discuss when drilling might be effective and when it might not. To be more effective, teachers have to adapt to their audience and considering this, age is an important factor to take into account when teaching. Depending on their age students will be more receptive to different ways of teaching. As seen in the CTEYL training, learners between the ages of 5 and 9 will need more repetition and drilling to retain what has been taught in the lesson as their language acquisition is mostly unconscious and their memorization skills are rather low. Therefore, drilling is an effective way to teach that public and a common practice with students that age. However, as they mature, young learners see their learning abilities change. They start learning consciously and intellectualize the language. From language acquisition they move on to language learning. Thus the teaching approach has to be different and drilling does not become as effective a method, as the main technique, and teachers should use drilling only in certain phases of their lesson, which I will discuss in a later part. Adapting to the students has also to take account of the level of the latter. When taking a look at the descriptors of the CEFR, we can see that students at levels A1/A2 and even B! To some extent (beginner, elementary and pre-intermediate levels in common EFL classification) should be able to use “basic sentence patterns with memorized phrases”, that they show “only limited control of a few [...] sentence patterns in a memorized repertoire”. In regards to these descriptors, we can consider that drilling should be an effective method, since it is a good way to memorize and reuse phrases in a short time. On the other hand, the descriptors of the levels above start mentioning the fact that the speaker should be able to use the language spontaneously, correct themselves when they make mistakes. This shows the learners’ ability to build their own language repertoire and to adapt to the situation. Therefore, drilling can be considered not so effective anymore for students of these levels. This also depends on the time of the lesson, and this is what I will discuss in the next part. If we follow the ESA, we can unmistakably say that teachers should use different methods depending on which phase they are in. During the Engage phase, which aims at making students think and speak in English without correcting nor interrupting them, drilling would not be a recommended method. It would only prevent the students from speaking freely and it would go against the purpose of that phase. The same can be said about the Activate phase. Indeed, during that phase, we want the students to speak and we should not interrupt the flow of the production as it would only interfere and probably demotivate the shy ones. Correction should come at the end of the production along with feedback, so if drilling was a possibility, it would be only shortly during feedback. However, the study phase is a much better time to be using drilling. In that phase, we should focus on the grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. To set basic grammar structure, memorize vocabulary and help the students to improve their diction, drilling is in that case an effective method and it should be applied along with others to make the study phase more beneficial to the students. As we could see, adaptation is a skill needed by teachers in order to get better results in and outside the classroom. Drilling is an effective method, it only depends on certain conditions. It is more appropriate to be used with younger learners, with students whose level is lower and during the Study phase of a lesson. If used in such manner, drilling is one of the most effective methods teachers can use.
