Vocabulary or Grammar? (part 2)

What do experts have to say ?

What I wrote here is an excerpt of my theses, so....my apology for the rather academic style :)

In the language teaching practice, what has been done is mostly separating grammar and vocabulary as two different aspects, with more priority given to grammar. It means that learners have to master the grammar system then learn lots of words to be able to talk about anything (Lewis, 2000).

Teachers had also been  encouraged to see grammar as the structure or "the bones of the language, and the vocabulary as the flesh to be added" (Hill, 2000:47).

 Lewis (2000) then stressed on the importance of learning lexis, specifically, lexical chunks, over grammar since learning lexical chunks enables learners to talk about things. It is possible because lexical chunks actually carry syntactic rules.

It is also claimed that native speakers can better understand ungrammatical utterances with accurate vocabulary, than those with accurate grammar and inaccurate vocabulary (Widdowson, as cited in Zimmerman 1997).

"Without grammar little can be conveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed" (Wilkins, quoted in Lewis, 1997).

"A lexical mistakes often causes misunderstanding; while grammar mistakes rarely does" (Sinclair, cited in Lewis 1997).

No more words needed :)

Is Drilling Effective?

Drill (v): to fix something in the mind or to habit a pattern by repetitive instruction (www.meriam-webster.com).

Drilling practice may seem like a boring activity. But like it or not, drilling works!
Referring to the way we learn our mother tongue when we were a baby, we did listen to the same forms repeated by our parents, and we copied them.
How do you think we learned the word 'makan', or 'mau', or 'ibu'? Yes, you're right, through repetition practice, similar to drilling.

By referring to this concept we may now have more understanding on the importance of drilling. It is necessary especially for young learners and or beginners.

There are several types of drilling practice (adopted from http://www.usingenglish.com/weblog/archives/000414.html): choral drills, interactive drills, substitution drills, transformation drills and drilling using flash cards.

1. Choral drills
It is the type of drills where a teacher models a word (s) or sentence and students listen and repeat.

2. Interactive drills
It is the type of drills where a teacher ask questions, and the students are expected to answer using the forms taught earlier.  In this drill, the possible answers are also limited, and not too complex. Betty S. Azhar's grammar book has many oral drill practice of this form.

3. Substitution drills
In a substitution drill the teacher gives an example sentence, then asks the students to change one or more words in it (targeting vocabulary enrichment).

4. Transformation drills
Similar to substitution drills, but here the changes are in grammar, not vocabulary.

5. Drilling with flash cards
The technique may be similar to no 4 and 5 above, but mainly targeting vocabulary and using flash cards as the prompt.