Drill no Tetsujin: Communicative na Drill kara Role-play e (The Expert of Drills: From Communicative Drills to Role- Plays) by Sinichiro Yokomizo. Tokyo: Ale co, 1997, 225 pp. Reviewed by Eiko Torii- Williams Wellesley College / Boston University An ity, experienced teacher knows that mechanical drills alone cannot provide Students satisfactory results in a foreign language classroom. Drills tend to be a dull activ- often creating considerable strain on both teachers and students. if quickly lose their motivation for speech, terns they simply parrot certain speech pat- drills is that when the teacher gives the cue. Another criticism of mechanical students are often found to be unable to transfer skills acquired through drills to actual communication (Krashen & Terrell, 1983; Canale, 1983; Omaggio, 1986; Richards & Rodgers, 1986; Takamizawa, 1989). Since the Communicative Approach (instruction oriented toward communi- cation-based activities rather than grammar drills) was introduced into JFL (Japa- nese as a foreign language), teachers in the field have adapted numerous task- oriented activities as well as role-plays by either replacing the mechanical drills, drills. or combining the communicative activities with the existing mechanical However, the new approach has not delivered the expected results. When teachers replace mechanical drills and use only task-oriented activities and role-plays, stu- dents cannot develop a strong foundation to perform communicative tasks. When teachers attempt to combine mechanical drills and communicative activities, the gap between the two tasks and role-plays. is not bridged successfully, and students fail to perform the An even worse case scenario is that through role-play and 1993; Nishiguchi, simulation type exercises, the students end up practicing forms that are not useful or are actually inaccurate (Okazaki & Okazaki, NFLC, How can we make communicative activities work in no Tetsujin drills' for the classroom? This book provides an answer. Drill offers specific and practical guidelines to construct 'com- The author, Sinichiro Yokomizo, advocates communicative drills, which he calls Contextualized Exercises, for the following reasons: (1) Forming a sentence and being able to use it in actual communication are not the same, and it is the teacher's responsibility to show the students when and how to use the learned sentence through the communicative drills; (2) Mechanical pattern drills can become mo- notonous, but the communicative drills enable students to use the pattern in a mean- ingful context; (3) We cannot expect a smooth transition from mechanical drills to municative elementary Japanese language classrooms. Issues in Applied Linguistics ISSN 1050-4273 Vol. 9 1998, Regents ofthe University of California No.