Enhancing Students' Grammatical Ability Through The Application Of Drill Method

This research is aimed at finding out the extent of the improvement in students' grammatical ability through the application of the drill method at the eighth-grade students of MTsN 4 Banda Aceh and at identifying the obstacles faced by students during the learning process. Initial interviews revealed that students frequently mixed up sentence structures and tenses, indicating low grammatical ability. This study employed a descriptive quantitative approach. The sample was taken purposively, consisting of 23 students from class VIII 7. Data were collected through grammar tests administered at the end of each of the three sessions, covering repetition, substitution, and transformation drills. The test consisted of 15 questions comprising multiple-choice and essay items, as well as a questionnaire distributed after the entire learning process was completed. The results showed a progressive improvement in students' mean scores across each session, from 68.78 in the first test, to 75.52 in the second test, and 81.37 in the third test. In terms of individual improvement from the first to the third test, 8 students (35%) were categorized as extremely improved, 7 students (30%) as sharply improved, 7 students (30%) as gradually improved, and only 1 student (4%) as slightly improved. However, the questionnaire results revealed that the most significant obstacle faced by students was related to transformation drills, where approximately 95% of students reported difficulty in understanding changes in sentence structure and rephrasing sentences into different forms. These findings suggest that the drill method positively contributes to the improvement of students' grammatical ability through consistent and structured repeated practice.