Running head: DRILL-AND-KILL VS.

COMMUNICATIVE USES OF TECHNOLOGY

Sarah Wroblewski
FLT 881: Teaching Foreign Language with Technology
Dr. Dustin De Felice
Fall 2017
Persuasive Paper on Technology

Drill-and-Kill vs. Communicative Uses of Technology:

Effective Uses of Technology in the Foreign Language Classroom

Sarah Hallinen (Wroblewski)

FLT 881-730: Teaching FL with Technology

DRILL-AND-KILL VS. COMMUNICATIVE USES OF TECHNOLOGY 2

Introduction

In today’s educational environment, technology is often seen as an essential

classroom tool. From full-fledged virtual classrooms to hybrid and traditional settings,

technology is quickly becoming an integral part of teaching and learning. Current students

grow up with the use of technology and need technological literacy skills in order to be

successful. This is no different in the foreign language setting where technology can help

bridge many gaps and assist in student learning. As Blake (2008) discusses, students

learning a new language must be exposed to and process large amounts of second language

(L2) input in order to achieve any sort of proficiency. This second language acquisition

(SLA) process can be accelerated through study-abroad programs or travel, however due to

cost or other limitations many students opt for the traditional classroom method instead.

Blake (2008) offers technology as a potential solution to “enhance and enrich the learners’

contact with the target language and thereby assist the SLA process” (p. 2). The question

then becomes how to best use the technological tools at our disposal to meet the needs of

students when it comes to SLA. Technology tools themselves are neutral; it is up to the

educator using them to determine their effectiveness based on how they are used (Blake,

2008). Two popular uses of technology in the foreign language classroom include “drill-

and-kill” methods where students participate in large amounts of rote practice vs. more

communicative methods where students must negotiate meaning and present information.

This paper will discuss the SLA theories relevant to both approaches and provide evidence

that while drill-and-kill uses of technology can potentially help with some aspects of

learning in SLA, using technology for communicative teaching and learning is more

effective and will better help students acquire and use the language.
DRILL-AND-KILL VS. COMMUNICATIVE USES OF TECHNOLOGY 3

Drill-and-Kill

One way that foreign language teachers use technology in the classroom is through

“drill-and-kill” methods. These activities involve students using technology to practice verb

conjugations, basic sentence building, or other grammar and vocabulary based exercises in

an isolated and/or repetitive setting. These types of activities date back to a time when

foreign language instruction was largely viewed as assisting students in memorizing and

repeating large amounts of information (Erben, 2013). These methods were based on the

work of B.F. Skinner with conditioning: having students learn through repetitive practice

and reinforcement, with examples such as the Audio-Lingual Method (Larsen-Freeman &

Anderson, 2011). This corresponded well with computer labs back in the 1970s and 1980s

that allowed users to practice grammar problems over and over and receive immediate

feedback (Erben, 2013).

SLA theories have evolved (as has technology) and research shows that exclusively

teaching in this drill-and-kill manner is largely ineffective when it comes to being able to

use the language outside of the classroom setting (Larsen-Freeman & Anderson, 2011). It is

rare to find a language teacher that still employs only drill-and-kill exercises in the

classroom, thanks to new communication-based national standards through ACTFL and

better research-based practices. However, as Blake (2008) states: “There is nothing

intrinsically wrong with incorporating grammar exercises into the curriculum, even the

drill-and-kill type, especially in the beginning stages of learning a new language” (p. 40). In

an informal survey of language teachers in my own district, every teacher said they employ

some form of drill-and-kill exercise, and often with the assistance of technology. Many

mentioned the website www.conjuguemos.com, where students can practice typing

DRILL-AND-KILL VS. COMMUNICATIVE USES OF TECHNOLOGY 4

vocabulary and verb conjugations in a repetitive setting or through educational games.

They said it helps their students learn the verb conjugations well enough that they become

automatic. But how useful is drill-and-kill?

In a recent study by Cornillie & Desmet (2015), they employed drill-and-kill style

mini-games in a mystery story context. The goal was to use controlled practice activities

and see if learning would transfer to a more meaningful, communicative environment. It’s

important to note that the drill-and-kill style exercises were not fully isolated, but instead

incorporated into the overall story context (Cornillie & Desmet, 2015). Results showed that

students did transfer over grammatical knowledge from the practice activities to

mechanical tasks as well as more complex tasks, which supports what many teachers say

(Cornillie & Desmet, 2015). However, Cornillie & Desmet (2015) point out that learners

were “treating the practice rather mechanically… [and] gains in accuracy were small” (p.

155-156). These results correspond with results from the Mallard study referenced by

Blake (2008) where students did not make significant gains as compared with peers when

completing more drill-and-kill style activities through technology.

Why do teachers continue to use technology for these drill-and-kill style activities if

their students don’t make overly significant gains? Blake (2008) references one point of

view when he states:

Many teachers feel that the only curricular role for technology is to relieve the

teacher of the more burdensome aspects of testing and rote drills, so that classroom

time can be fully utilized for communication… teachers are happy not to have to

bother with… drills… during precious class time, which goes against the theoretical

bent of the communicative classroom (p. 12).

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In other words, some teachers use technology exclusively for drill-and-kill activities that

can free up classroom time for more communication-based activities, which are better

based in research. The issue then becomes whether language teachers should use

technology ONLY for drill-and-kill exercises and save class time for communication. Can

technology be used effectively for communicative-based teaching and learning?

Communicative-Based Uses of Technology

There is little to no dispute that communication-based activities help with language

learning (Erben, 2013; Larsen-Freeman & Anderson, 2011; Blake, 2008). The ACTFL world-

readiness standards have “Communication” as a main pillar, and state that “’the more

learners use the target language in meaningful situations, the more rapidly they achieve

competency’” (Cutshall, 2012, p. 39). Many teachers incorporate communication-based

activities into the foreign language classroom, but technology is not always used. With the

introduction of the Internet in the 90s, the uses of technology in the language classroom

increased exponentially, even into the realm of communication-based language learning.

Erben (2013) discusses how “Internet technologies (e.g., e-mail, online forums, and chat

rooms) provide more opportunities for learners to have authentic conversations with

native speakers in the target culture” (p. 15). The fact that students can easily interact with

native speakers is a huge advantage to technology and something they usually don’t

experience in the classroom. Students can perform authentic communicative tasks while

receiving the best type of input possible, directly from the source.

Examples of technology use for communication such as the asynchronous online

discussion board Tik-Talk interactions described by Evans (2009) provide many positives.

French language learners communicated with native French speakers and both groups
DRILL-AND-KILL VS. COMMUNICATIVE USES OF TECHNOLOGY 6

made many gains during the process: they cooperated and collaborated as they negotiated

meaning and gave each other feedback, made improvements in conversational writing, and

had increased motivation (Evans, 2009). In another example, Canto, Jauregi, & Van Den

Bergh (2013) studied the effects of synchronous communication between language

learners and native speakers in digital environments via video-web communication and

virtual worlds. After these experiences students performed very well on both an oral test

measure (graded on grammatical accuracy as well as coherence) and reported that they felt

more confident, had improved fluency and knowledge of target culture, and learned more

vocabulary (Canto, Jauregi, & Van Den Bergh, 2013, p. 113) These interactions with native

speakers clearly make a difference in student achievement and language acquisition. But is

it worth it to integrate technologies for these sorts of communicative-based tasks with

native speakers?

Canto, Jauregi, and Van Den Bergh (2013) bring up some of the struggles of these

sorts of collaborative projects, especially when working synchronously with native

speakers. There can be problems “at the individual, classroom, and/or socio-institutional

level” such as issues with task design, teacher to teacher communication, technological

difficulties, learner motivation, and even prestige of target culture (Canto, Jauregi, & Van

Den Bergh, 2013, p. 108). As a teacher, these barriers can seem impossible to overcome and

drill-and-kill use of technology is quite appealing when faced with these challenges. It

requires much less preparation ahead of time and it frees up time for students to perform

similar communicative tasks in the classroom, as Blake discussed (2008). However, this

study shows the advantages to technology-based communicative tasks: the researchers

found that the experimental groups that were exposed to these virtual forms of
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communication with native speakers outperformed their control group peers who

performed the same tasks face-to-face in the classroom (Canto, Jauregi, & Van Den Bergh,

2013). In other words, using technology to interact with native speakers was much more

effective than performing the same tasks in class with peers. Technology use for interaction

with native speakers shows clear benefits in foreign language instruction.

Some teachers simply do not have the ability or time for a large-scale project such as

Tik-Talk or video chats. Are there any other added benefits of communication through

technology that you can achieve beyond what you can do in the classroom, even without

the added element of native speakers? The answer is yes. Darhower (2002) performed a

study on a group of students in a Spanish class at the university level. Students, in addition

to interaction during normal class hours, participated in synchronous chats outside of class

time in an online environment. These chats were with fellow classmates, not with native

speakers. Darhower (2002) found that students used the foreign language for a “much

wider range of interpersonal purposes than would have been possible in the official face-

to-face classroom discourse” (Ortega, 2009, p. 248). Examples include use of humor,

profanity, role-playing, and negotiation of on vs. off-task discussions (Darhower, 2002).

Darhower (2002) notes that the “chat room context provided a communicative forum for

the development of a type of sociolinguistic competence which… is not promoted in the

typical L2 classroom but is, nevertheless, part of native speakers’ use of the L2 that these

chatters are learning” (p. 272). Ortega (2009) expands on this, talking about how “digital

social networks can foster second language and literacy learning that is remarkably rich in

social terms” (p. 248). In other words, these are communicative skills students acquired
DRILL-AND-KILL VS. COMMUNICATIVE USES OF TECHNOLOGY 8

through the use of technological chats that they would not have practiced otherwise in the

foreign language classroom setting.

In conclusion, using the technology we have available today for solely drill-and-kill

style exercises is a huge underutilization of the resources available. While drill-and-kill

activities can have some useful application in the foreign language classroom, particularly

through saving class time for more communicative tasks, the benefits of communicative

uses of technology are much stronger. As Blake (2008) states, “Mechanized language drills

might produce some learning of forms, but the real goal of acquisition is best fostered by a

communicative environment rich in comprehensible input” (p. 17). Giving students the

opportunity to interact with native speakers is the ultimate manifestation of this sort of

language learning, but even without native speakers students can acquire unique

communicative skills they would not otherwise through the use of technology. Taking

advantage of these new technologies such as chat rooms, video communication, and virtual

worlds allow students to build their communicative and linguistic competence in ways they

cannot with the drill-and-kill use of technology. They may take time for teachers to

develop, but the benefits outweigh the costs.

DRILL-AND-KILL VS. COMMUNICATIVE USES OF TECHNOLOGY 9

References

Blake, R. J. (2008). Brave new digital classroom: Technology and foreign language learning.

Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.

Canto, S., Jauregi, K., & Van Den Bergh, H. (2013) Integrating cross-cultural interaction

through video-communication and virtual worlds in foreign language teaching

programs: is there an added value? ReCALL 25(1): 105–121. European Association

for Computer Assisted Language Learning 105 doi:10.1017/S0958344012000274

Cornillie, F., & Desmet, P. (2015). Design and empirical evaluation of controlled L2 practice

through mini-games—moving beyond drill-and-kill?. In F. Helm, L. Bradley, M.

Guarda, & S. Thouësny (Eds), Critical CALL – Proceedings of the 2015 EUROCALL

Conference, Padova, Italy (pp. 150-157). Dublin: Research- publishing.net.

http://dx.doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2015.000325

Cutshall, S. (2012). More than a decade of standards: Integrating “Communication” in your

language instruction. The Language Educator. Retrieved from:

https://www.actfl.org/sites/default/files/publications/standards/Communication.

pdf

Darhower, M. (2002). Interactional Features of Synchronous Computer-Mediated

Communication in the Intermediate L2 Class: A Sociocultural Case Study. CALICO

Journal, 19(2), 249-277. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24149361

Erben, T. (2013). CALLing all foreign language teachers: Computer assisted language

learning in the classroom. New York: Routledge.

Evans, M. (2009). Foreign language learning with digital technology. New York: Continuum

International Publishing Group.

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Larsen-Freeman, D. & Anderson, M. (2011). Techniques & Principles in Language Teaching.

(3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ortega, L. (2009). Understanding Second Language Acquisition. London: Hodder Education.