CHAPTER 8
ROUTINE MANIPULATIONS
It is only by constant reiteration that one can impress an alien concept upon a recalcitrant mind.
Negative advertising has been with us at least since the days of 'No stoop, No Squat, No Squint,' and purveyors of $10.98 language courses have made a fortune from offering 'No Tiresome Drills!' and 'No Confusing Grammar Rules!' Whether drills are necessarily tiresome remains to be seen, but there can be little doubt that they are necessary. Even many cognitivists, although they do not emphasize drill to the same extent that the behaviorists do, are still willing to recognize a place for this kind of activity. Thus Kuno (1969): 'Whatever may be shown [through research] about pattern drill vs. true communication …, the student must still be induced to engage in such activities for any learning to take place.' Kniesner (1969) concurs. Rivers (1968) sees drills as being particularly suited for internalization of the 'closed systems' of a language. Bolinger (1968) quips that 'to imagine that drills are to be replaced by rule-giving is to imagine that digestion can be replaced by swallowing.'
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