Teaching grammar to A2 Restricted output: drills, exercises, dialogues

Task 161:Moving beyond repetition drills

What variations can be given beyond simply repeating what the teacher says?

Commentary • • •

Three ideas -substitution, transformation and true sentences -are explained in the following sections. •

Substitution drills

Repetition, though useful for allowing full concentration on pronunciation, can be a little mindless. The following drill demands a little more thought:

TEACHER: He's going to drive the car. STUDENTS: He's going to drive the car. TEACHER: bus

STUDENTS: He's going to drive the bus. TEACHER: taxi (etc.)

Not much more thought, admittedly! But it's not difficult to make it harder: TEACHER: He's going to eat the cake.

STUDENTS: He's going to eat the cake.

TEACHER: coffee

STUDENTS: He's going to drink the coffee. TEACHER: film

STUDENTS: He's going to watch the film. (etc.)

These drills are based on the principle of substitution. In the two examples above, the noun is being substituted by another -but it could be any word. And to make it really demanding, it could vary sentence by sentence:

TEACHER: He's going to eat the cake. STUDENTS: He's going to eat the cake. TEACHER: coffee

STUDENTS: He's going to drink the coffee. TEACHER: Mary

STUDENTS: Mary's going to drink the coffee. TEACHER: make

STUDENTS: Mary's going to make the coffee. TEACHER: beds

STUDENTS: Mary's going to make the beds. (etc.)