Language Learning Methods: Choral Drilling

Having already covered language immersion in our previous post on language learning methods, today we'll be covering a method that most will be very familiar with, choral drilling.

It's choral drilling.

The method is almost as old as time itself. Put simply, choral drilling involves repeating, almost ad nauseam, the words or phrases you are trying to learn. While most learners of English will remember having to repeat the conjugations of the verb to be, they can take solace in the fact that pretty much every learner has had to suffer through choral drilling at some point.

Rarely anyone's favourite activity, choral drilling methods have proven to be beneficial when it comes to learning conjugations and vocabulary. Nothing helps embed something into your memory like repeating it over and over and over and over...

When it comes to phrases, however, we wouldn't recommend choral drilling. It makes the learner inflexible and when you speak a language you can never expect the sentences to always be in the same order. Learning a language should be fun, don't make it a tedious endeavour by learning it the same way you'd learn the pledge of allegiance.

Use this method sparingly for new vocabulary, verbs and expressions. Just don't overdo it! There are so many better ways to learn languages.