EXPERIENCE
As we enter the classroom, the first thing we notice is that the students are attentively listening as the teacher is presenting a new dialog, a conversation berween the people. The student know they will be expected to eventually memorize the dialog the teacher is introducing All of the teacher instructions are in English. Sometimes she uses actions to conversation meaning, but not one word of the students’ native language is uttered. After she acts out the dialog, she says
‘All right class. I am going to repeat the the dialog now. Listen carefully,
Two people are walking along a sidewalk in town. They know each other, and as they meet, they stop to talk One of them is named Sally and the other one is named Bill. I will talk for Sally and Bill Listen to their conversation:
S A L L Y Good morning, Bill
B I L L Good morning, Sally.
S A L L Y How are you?
B I L L Fine, thanks. And you?
S A L L Y Fine. Where are you going?
B I L L I’m going to the post office.
S A L L Y I am too. Shall we go together?
B I L L Sure. Let’s go.
Listen one more time. This time try to understand all that I am saying. Now she has the whole class repeat each of the lines of dialog after her model. They repeat each time several times before moving on to she next line. When the class comes to the line, ‘I’m going to the post office, they stumble a bit in their repetition. The teacher, at this point, stops the repetition. The teacher, at this point, stops the repetition and uses a back ward build up drill (Expansion drill).The purpose of this drill is to break down the troublesome sentence into smaller parts. The teacher starts with the end of the sentence and has the class repeat just the last two words. Since they can do this, the teacher adds a few more words, and the class repeats this expanded phrase. Little by little the teacher builds up the phrases until the entire sentence is being repeated.
T E A C H E R Repeat after me: post office.
C L A S S Post office
T E A C H E R To the post office.
C L A S S To the post office.
T E A C H E R Going to the post office.
C L A S S Going to the post office.
T E A C H E R I’m going to the post office
C L A S S I’m going to the post office
Through this step by step procedure, the teacher is able to give the students help in producing the troublesome line. Having worked on the line or phrase begins and ends in the sentence.
After the students have repeated the dialog several times, the teacher gives them a chance to adopt the role of bill while she says Sally’s lines. Before the class actually says each line, the teacher models it. In effect, the class is experiencing a repetition drill where the task is to listen carefully and attempt to manic the teacher’s model as accurately as possible.
Next the class and the teacher switch roles in order to practice a little more, the teacher saying Bill’s lines and the class saying Sally’s. Then the teacher divides the class in half so that each half gets to try to say on their own either Bill’s or Sally’s lines. The teacher stops the students from time to time when she feels they are straying too far from the model, and once again provides a model, which she has them attempt to copy. To further practice the lines of this dialog the teacher has all the boys in the class take Bill’s part and all the girls take Sally’s
She then initiates a chain drill with four of the lines from the dialog. A chain drill gives students an opportunity to say the lines individually. The teacher listens and can tell which students are struggling and will need more practice. A chain drill also lets students use the expression in communication with someone else, even though the limited. The teacher addresses the student nearest her with, ‘Good morning, Jose.’ He, in turn, responds, ‘Good morning, teacher’ She says, ‘How are you? ‘Jose answers, ‘Fine, thanks. And you? ‘The teacher replies, ‘Fine.’ He understands through the teacher’s gestures that he is to turn to the student sitting beside him and greet her. That student, in turn, says her lines in reply to him. When she has finished, she greeting to the teacher.
Finally, the teacher selects two students to perform the entire dialog for the rest of the class. When they are finished, two others do the same. Not ever yone has a chance to say the dialog in a pair today, but perhaps they will some time this week.
The teacher moves next to the second maiot phase of the lesson. She continues to drill the student with language from the dialog, but these brills repuire more than simple repetition. The teacher leads is a will repeat a sentence from the dialog and replace a word or phrase in the sentence with the word or phrase the teacher gives them.
The teacher begins by reciting a line from the dialog, ‘I am going to the post office. ‘Following this she shows the students a picture of bank and says the phrase, ‘The bank. ‘She pauses, then says, ‘I am going to the bank.
From her example the students realize that they are supposed to take the cue phrase (‘the bank’), which the teacher supplies, and put it into its proper place in the sentence.
Now she gives them their first cue phrase, ‘The drugstore.’ Together the students respond, ‘I am going to the drugstore. ‘The teacher smiles. ‘Very good?’ she exclaims. The teacher cues, ‘The park.’ The students chorus, ‘I am going to the park.’
Other cues she offers in turn are ‘the café,’ ‘the supermarket,’ ‘the bus station,’ ‘the football field,’ and ‘the library.’ Each cue is accompanied by a picture as before After the students have gone trough the drill
A similar procedure is followed for another sentence in the dialog, ‘How are you? ‘The subject pronouns ‘he,’ ‘she,’ ‘they,’ and ‘you’ are used as cue words. This substitution drill is slightly more difficult for the students since they have to change the form of the verb ‘be’ to ‘is’ or ‘are, ‘depending on which subject pronoun the teacher gives them. The student are apparently familiar with the subject pronoun since the teacher is not using any pictures Instead, after going through the drill a few times supplying oral cues, the teacher points to a boy in the class and the students understand they are to us the pronouns ‘he’ in the sentence. They chorus’
‘How is he?’ ‘Good!’ says the teacher. She points to a girl and waits for the class’s response, then points to other students to elicit the use of ‘they.’
Finally the teacher increases the complexity of the task by leading the student in a multiple slot substitution drill. This is essentially the same type of drill as the single-slot the teacher just used. Hoe ever with this drill, students must recognize what part of speech the cue word is and where it us into the sentence. Then they must make a decision concerning where are the cue word or phrase belongs in a sentence also supplied by the teacher. The teacher in this class starts off by having the students repeat the original sentence from the dialog. ‘I am going to post office. ‘Then she gives them the cue ‘ she.’ The students understand and produce, ‘She is going to the post office.’ The next cue the teacher offers is ‘to the park.’ The students hesitate at first; then they respond by correctly producing, ‘She is going to the [ark.’ She continues in this manner, sometimes providing a subject pronoun, other times naming a location
The substitution drills are followed by a trans formation drill. This type of drill asks students to change one type of sentence into another an affirmative sentence into a negative or an active sentence into a passive, for example. In this class, the teacher uses a substitution drill that requires the students to change statement into a yes/no-question. The teacher offers an example,’ I say, is going to the post office. ‘’ You make a question by saying ‘’I say going to the pos office? ‘’
The teacher models two more examples of this transformation, then asks, ’Does everyone understand? OK, let’s begin the bank. ‘’’The class replies in turn, ‘they are ready to move on to a
The teacher holds up one of the pictures she used earlier, the picture of a football field, and asks the class, ‘Are you doing to the football field. ‘ She poses the next question while holding up a picture of a park, ‘ Are you going to the park’ And again answers herself, ‘Yes, I’m going to the park. ‘She holds us a third picture, the one of a library. She poses a poses a question.’ To the class. They respond together’
‘very good, ,the teacher says. Through her actions and examples, the students have learned that they are to answer the questions following the pattern she has modeled. The teacher drills them with this pattern for the next few minutes. Since the students can handle it, she poses the question