The reason why drills are so hard to get away from is that a language does not consist of sounds and words alone. It also has its stock of constructions and processes and rules. Just as a speaker must choose the right words for his purpose, and the right sounds to make them intelligible, so he must develop facility in putting them into appropriate grammatical settings. Consider the following English examples, which could be matched from any other language. The principal words are tank and leak.
| Barely intelligible. | Clear and idomatic. |
| Tank leak. | The tank leaks. |
| A tank is leaking. | |
| The tank is leaking. | |
| Tank leak, no? | Is the tank leaking? |
| The tank is leaking, isn't it? | |
| Does the tank leak? | |
| The tank leaks, doesn't it? | |
| Tank no leak. | The Tank doesn't leak. |
| The tank isn't leaking. | |
| The tank hasn't leaked yet. | |
| The tank won't leak. |
As these examples show, grammatical inadequacy not only sounds funny; it often carries with it a certain amount of ambiguity.
But to say that drills are concerned with the teaching of constructions would not be an adequate statement of their function. A grammatical construction cannot be mastered by itself. A student may repeat one or more examples of the construction after the teacher, and he may see other examples of it in
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