How to Drill Effectively (Without Sounding Like a Drill Sergeant)
Drilling isn't old-fashioned, but most of us were only ever taught one kind.
Years ago in Xi’an, China, I taught a class the coursebook phrase “I’d rather not, if that’s all right.”
We drilled it. The whole room came back at me in chorus, twice, stress in the right places, the lot. I remember standing there feeling pleased with myself.
Thirty seconds later I set up a roleplay where they had to turn down an invitation.
Not one of them used it.
For a long time I thought that was proof that drilling belonged to the dark ages, something we’d all sensibly stopped using. Wrong! Drilling wasn’t the problem. Not finishing it was - I didn’t know there was more than one sort of drilling.
Drilling is one of the best things you can do in a lesson (in terms of outcome per time spent, in my opinion). So let’s look at what it’s for, five drill types, how to use them (and when to stop!)
Why we use drilling in the classroom
A student in a real conversation is doing a lot at once: choosing what to say, choosing how polite to be, listening to the other person, and assembling the sounds. No wonder it’s hard to speak!
Drilling makes a lot of that hard part automatic, so their attention can go somewhere better. It clears space. It’s also why comprehensible input alone rarely gets learners producing: understanding a phrase and using it under pressure are different skills.
Why it goes wrong
On most initial training courses you’re told you should drill. You watch a tutor model choral repetition once, you copy it in teaching practice, someone writes “good drilling” on your feedback sheet, and that’s it, done.
So you leave with one technique and a room full of different problems.
Choral repetition does one job well: it gets a whole class saying something at natural speed without anyone feeling exposed. Used on its own it produces exactly what I got in Xi’an, a room that can chant a phrase and can’t use it.
Five drills worth knowing
Pick by the problem in front of you.
Choral drill. Everyone repeats together. Use it first, always, because it’s safe: nobody can hear themselves fail. It gets the phrase into the room and lets you hear the shape of the class’s difficulty.
Individual drill. One student at a time. Use it to find who has it and who’s hiding in the chorus. It’s the only drill that gives you honest information.
Substitution drill. You give the frame, they swap one part. “I’d rather not.” / “Go to the party.” / “I’d rather not go to the party.” Use it when students can say a phrase but can’t bend it. This is what turns a memorised chunk into a usable pattern, and it’s the one most teachers skip.
Backchaining. Build the phrase from the end backwards. “...all right.” / “...that’s all right.” / “...if that’s all right.” / “I’d rather not, if that’s all right.” Use it for anything long or awkward. Because the last chunk is always one they’ve already said, the stress and intonation stay natural instead of collapsing into a flat word-by-word crawl. It feels odd for ten seconds and then it feels obvious.
The disappearing drill. Write the phrase on the board, drill it, rub out two words, drill again, rub out two more, until the board is empty and they’re still saying it. Use it last. Students find it weirdly enjoyable.
How to run a drill, step-by-step
Check they understand it first. Never drill a form students can’t decode. You’ll get a beautiful, meaningless chant. A quick concept check takes fifteen seconds and saves the whole drill.
Model it twice at natural speed. Slow models teach a version of the phrase that doesn’t exist outside your classroom. If it’s fast and contracted in real speech, model it fast and contracted.
Drill the hard bit, not the whole sentence. The single change that improves most teachers’ drilling. If the trouble is “I’d rather”, drill “I’d rather” eight times. Do not drill eleven words to fix two. Backchain outwards from there.
Choral, then half the room, then individuals. Left side, right side, then four or five students in no fixed order so nobody can count ahead and prepare.
Get out and use it. Straight into a task where they have to produce it for a reason.
When to stop
Stop when it comes back right twice in a row, not when it’s perfect.
Over-drilling does a specific kind of damage: the phrase turns into a chant with its own melody, welded to your voice and your rhythm, and it stops being available in conversation. You hear it later as a sing-song recital that arrives complete or not at all.
Ninety seconds is plenty. If it isn’t landing by then, the problem isn’t repetition. They don’t understand it, can’t hear the difference, or can’t make the sound, and those need pronunciation work, not more reps.
Things to watch out for
Meaning before form, always. A drill on a phrase nobody understands is a song.
Watch the quiet ones during choral work. Mouth movement isn’t sound. Half a class can sit out a chorus entirely.
Do not correct mid-chorus. Let it run, then remodel and go again. Stopping a choral drill to fix one student kills the safety that makes it work.
Keep your own talking down. Drilling is the one part of the lesson where high teacher talking time earns its keep, but only if you’re modelling, not explaining.
Drill less, more often. Ninety seconds in three lessons beats five minutes in one.
The short version
Nobody learns to speak by being thrown into free production with a phrase they never got their mouth around.
So drill the difficult fragment rather than the whole sentence, run choral before individual, stop after two clean repetitions, and go straight into a task where they need the thing you’ve given them. Boom.
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Thank you for this post! Drilling is good, even if it doesn't always work - it still helps build self-confidence. Your tips are very useful.