Why has it become such a sin in EFL/ESL to ask students to “listen and repeat”? Whatever happened to repetition?
I have never quite understood why repetition (and perhaps controlled practice at large) went away in the first place. True, it can be boring, but so can a pseudo information gap activity based on train schedules, the weather forecast for the British Isles or a worn out Bill Cosby VHS that nobody but the teacher can understand and laugh at.
True, repetition may not speed up acquisitional processes, but then again, a set of long-winded grammar discovery questions or a mechanical gap-fill won’t either.
So why do so many teachers wince at the thought of “repeat after me” in class? Why have so many recent coursebooks banned “listen and repeat” in favor of the seemingly less threatening “listen and practice”?
What in the name of God is wrong with repetition?
Absolutely nothing, I think. But first, let me be very clear about what repetition probably cannot do:
1. I don’t think repetition can help students understand words, chunks and rules that weren’t properly clarified to begin with.
2. I don’t think repetition can speed up the acquisition of any given structure.
3. I don’t think repetition alone, without quasi-communicative controlled practice, can help students deploy new language items spontaneously in communication.
But I believe repetition can potentially:
1. Help students get their tongues round long chunks of language that are difficult to say naturally: How long does it take to get there from here?
2. Help students get their tongues round chunks that are difficult to say with the correct stress and intonation: As far as I’m concerned, smoking should…
3. Help students have a go at connected speech (e.g.: blending and elision) so as to, at least, enhance listening comprehension: I talked him out of it – tóktimautãvit
4. Help students commit certain language chunks to memory – and I believe there’s an important memory component to chunk learning.
5. Help students notice certain language patterns that might have gone unnoticed otherwise. In this case, the acquisitional value of repetition would lie in its noticing potential rather than in the repetition itself.
The fact that methods that are now largely discredited (perhaps for the wrong reasons) used to rely so heavily on repetition and meaningless controlled practice does not necessarily mean that we should dismiss them out of hand. Think about it.
Thanks for reading.
Do you remember a powerpoint you presented in Rio (2 years ago would be my guess), that could be adapted for repeating collocations? I usaed that a lot and now with the new version of the IWB board we are using I created my own 🙂
I'm especially fond of repetition to help students memorize certain things, like adjectives/verbs and the prepositions that go with them.
Which one exactly Ricardo?
I couldn't agree more. No matter the new trends are, I still keep with the old fashioned repetition schemme. It works and I don't feel students feel bored about that.
Thanks for stopping by, Luiz. Funny you used the word old-fashioned. It made me wonder how much of what we actually do in a typical ELT class is not old-fashioned – at least to some extent.
Hey Luiz,
Again I agree with you. A lot of good comes from good use of repetition. However, how frowned upon is it nowadays? Isn’t drilling part of the CELTA syllabus? In the TTC course here (now IHTC) we also dedicate a session to the potential benefits of good old drilling.
Your blog’s amazing!
All the best,
Higor
Higor,
I’m glad we see eye to eye on this. 3 points:
1. Even though repetition and drilling may still get lots of “official” nods of approval (sometimes halfhearted, truth be told), we’re dealing with a generation of teachers whose own classroom learning may have had relatively little in the way of repetition and drilling. If it’s indeed true that teachers often tend to replicate classroom behaviors that were part of their own learning processes… well, need I say more?
2. As far as the CELTA is concerned, I have seen very little meaningful/purposeful/effective drilling in the lessons I’ve observed over the past few years. I have seen teachers asking students to repeat words that were only being taught for recognition… teachers engaging students in the “I go to school… he … he goes to school” type of drill… teachers moving from gap-filling to free production. The kind of repetition/drilling that may actually help to enhance learning has all but vanished from ELT, I think – well, if my experience as observer is anything to go by, really.
3. As a teacher, I have inherited groups and groups of students who simply nodded at me at the sound of “Ok, now listen and repeat.” What does that mean? It probably means that they were not used to being asked to repeat things. Period.
4. Three years ago I redesigned a set of courses at Alumni and the new, revamped product placed a lot more emphasis on pronunciation than what had been done up until then. Teachers generally welcomed the project, but guess what the number one source of resistance was: asking students to repeat things.
Anyway, thank you for your kind words, my friend.
For English as second language, repetition can be one way to make student pronoun accurately, but it depends on the approach of the teacher to make the students motivated.
Thanks, Teguh.