Introduction
The Audio-Lingual Method, like the
Direct Method we examined, has a goal very
different from that of the Grammar-Translation Method[1].
The Audio-Lingual Method was developed in the United States
during World War II. At that time there was a need for people to learn foreign languages rapidly for
military purposes.
As we have seen, the
Grammar-Translation Method did not prepare people to use the
target language. While communication in the target language was the goal of the Direct
Method, there were at the time exciting new
ideas about language and learning emanating(produce or show) from the disciplines of descriptive linguistics and
behavioral psychology. These ideas
led to the development of the Audio-Lingual Method.
Some
of the principles are similar to those of the Direct Method, but many are different, having been based upon
conceptions of language and learning from
these two disciplines.
Theory of language[2]
The theory of language
underlying Audiolingualism was derived from a
view proposed by American linguists in the 1950s - a view that came to be known as structural linguistics. Linguistics
had emerged as a flourishing
academic discipline in the 1950s, and the structural theory of language
constituted its backbone. Structural linguistics had developed in part
as a reaction to traditional grammar.
Many
nineteenth-century language scholars had viewed modern European languages as corruptions
of classical grammar, and languages from other parts of the world were viewed as
primitive and underdeveloped.
By the 1930s, the scientific
approach to the study of language was thought to consist of collecting
examples of what speakers said and analyzing them according to different levels of structural
organization rather than according to categories of Latin grammar.
In 1961 the American linguist
William Moulton, in a report prepared for the 9th International
Congress of Linguists, proclaimed the linguistic principles on which language
teaching methodology should be based:
·
Language is speech, not writing.
·
Language is a set of
habits.
·
Teach the language, not about
the language.
·
Language is what
its native speakers say, not what
someone thinks they ought to say.... .
·
Languages are different (quoted
in Rivers 1964: 5).
But
a method cannot be based simply on a theory of language.
It also needs to refer to the psychology of learning and to
learning theory. It is to this aspect of Audiolingualism that we now turn.
Principles of the Audio-Lingual Method
- The native language and the target language have separate linguistic systems. They should be kept apart so that the students' native language interferes as little as possible with the students' attempts to acquire the target language. (The language teacher uses only the target language in the classroom. Actions, pictures, or realia are used to give meaning otherwise).
- One of the language teacher's major roles is that of a model of the target language. Teachers should provide students with a native-speaker-like model. By listening to how it is supposed to sound, students should be able to mimic the model(The language teacher introduces the dialogue by modeling it two times; she introduces the drills by modeling the correct answers; at other times, she corrects mispronunciation by modeling the proper sounds in the target language).
- Language learning is a process of habit formation. The more often something is repeated, the stronger the habit and the greater the learning (The students repeat each line of the new dialogue several times).
- The purpose of language learning is to learn how to use the language to communicate (The teacher initiates a chain drill in which each student greets another).
- Particular parts of speech occupy particular "slots" in sentences. In order to create new sentences, students must learn which part of speech occupies which slot(The teacher uses single-slot and multiple-slot substitution drills).
§
Positive reinforcement helps the
students to develop correct habits(The teacher
says, "Very good," when the
students answer correctly).
§ The major objective
of language students should learn to respond to both verbal and
nonverbal stimuli (The teacher uses spoken
cues and
picture cues).
§ Each language has a finite number of patterns. Pattern practice helps
students to form habits which enable the students to use the patterns (The teacher conducts transformation and question-and-answer drills).
students to form habits which enable the students to use the patterns (The teacher conducts transformation and question-and-answer drills).
§ Students should "over
learn," i.e., learn to
answer automatically without stopping to think (When the students can do it, the teacher poses the questions to them rapidly).
§
The teacher should be like an orchestra leader-conducting, guiding, and controlling the students' behavior in the target language (The teacher provides the students with cues; she calls on individuals; she smiles encouragement; she holds up pictures one after another).
§ The major objective
of language teaching should be for students to
acquire the structural patterns; students will learn vocabulary afterward(New vocabulary is introduced through lines of the dialogue; vocabulary is limited).
acquire the structural patterns; students will learn vocabulary afterward(New vocabulary is introduced through lines of the dialogue; vocabulary is limited).
§ It is important to prevent learners from making
errors. Errors lead to the formation of bad habits. When errors do occur, they should be immediately corrected by the teacher (The students stumble over one of the lines of the dialog. The teacher uses a backward build-up drill with this line).
- The learning of a foreign languages should be the same as the acquisition of the native language. We do not need to memorize rules in order to use our native language. The rules necessary to use the target language will be figured out or induced from examples (Students are given no grammar rules; grammatical points are taught through examples and drills).
- The major challenge of foreign language teaching is getting students to overcome the habits of their native language. A comparison between the native and target language will tell the teacher in what areas her students will probably experience difficulty(The teacher does a contrastive analysis of the target language and the students' native language in order to locate the places where she anticipates her students will have trouble).
- Speech is more basic to language than the written form. The "natural order"- the order children follow when learning their native language - of skill acquisition is: listening, speaking, reading, and writing (The teacher writes the dialogue on the blackboard toward the end of the week. The students do some limited written work with the dialogue).
- Language cannot be separated from culture. Culture is not only literature and the arts, but also the everyday behavior of the people who use the target language. One of the teacher's responsibilities is to present information about that culture.
Reviewing the
Principles
1. What are the goals of teachers who use the
Audio-Lingual Method?
Teachers want their students to
be able to use the target language communicatively. In order to do
this, they believe students need to overlearn the target language,
to learn to use it automatically without stopping to think. Their students
achieve this by forming new habits in the target language and
overcoming the old habits of their native language.
2. What is the role of the teacher? What is the role
of the students?
The teacher is like an orchestra
leader, directing and controlling the language behavior of her students. She
also is responsible for providing her students with a good
model for imitation.
Students are imitators of the
teacher's model or the tapes she supplies of model speakers. They
follow the teacher's directions and respond as accurately and as
rapidly as possible.
3. What are some characteristics of the
teaching/learning process?
New vocabulary and structures are
presented through dialogs. The dialogs are learned through
imitation and repetition. Drills (such as repetition, backward build-up, chain,
substitution, transformation, and question-and-answer) are
conducted based upon the patterns present in the dialog. Students'
successful responses are positively reinforced. Grammar is
induced from the examples given; explicit grammar rules are not
provided. Cultural information is contextualized in the dialogs or presented
by the teacher. Students' reading and written work is based upon the oral
work they did earlier.
4. What is the nature of student-teacher interaction?
What is the nature of student-student
interaction?
There is student-to-student
interaction in chain drills or when students take different roles in
dialogs, but this interaction is teacher-directed. Most of
the interaction is between teacher and students and is initiated by the
teacher.
5. How are the feelings of the students dealt with?
There are no
principles of the method that relate to this area.
6. How is language viewed? How is culture viewed?
The view of language in the
Audio-Lingual Method has been influenced by descriptive
linguists. Every language is seen as having its own unique system. The system
is comprised of several different levels: phonological, morphological, and
syntactic. Each level has its own distinctive patterns.
Everyday speech is emphasized in
the Audio-Lingual Method. "The level of complexity of
the speech is graded, however, so that beginning students are
presented with only simple forms. Culture consists of the everyday
behavior and lifestyle of the target language speakers.
7. What areas of language are emphasized? What
language skills are emphasized?
The structures of the language
are emphasized over all the other areas. The syllabus is typically a structural one,
with the structures for any particular unit
included in the new dialog. Vocabulary is also contextualized within the dialogue. It is, however, limited since the emphasis
is placed on the acquisition of the patterns of the language.
The natural order of skills
presentation is adhered to (to stick to): listening, speaking, reading,
and writing. The oral/aural skills receive most of the attention. Pronunciation is taught
from the beginning, often by students
working in language laboratories on discriminating between members of minimal pairs.
8. What is the role of the students' native language?
The habits of the students' native language are
thought to interfere with the students'
attempts to master the target language. Therefore, the target language is used in the classroom, not the
students' native language. A
contrastive analysis between the students' native language and the target language will reveal
where a teacher should expect the
most interference.
9. How
is evaluation accomplished?
Each
question on the test would focus on only one point of the language at a time. Students
might be asked to distinguish between words in a minimal pair, for example, or to supply
an appropriate verb form in a sentence.
10. How
does the teacher respond to student errors?
Student errors are to be avoided if at all possible
through the teacher's awareness of where the
students will have difficulty and restriction of what they are taught to say.
P.s.-In advocating these
principles, proponents of Audio- lingualism were drawing on the theory of a
well-developed school
of American psychology-behaviorism.
The prominent Harvard behaviorist B. F. Skinner had elaborated a
theory of learning applicable to language learning in; his
influential book Verbal Behavior, in which he stated, "We have no reason to
assume.,. that verbal behavior differs in
any fundamental respect from non-verbal behavior, or that any new principles must be invoked to
account for it".
Reviewing the Techniques
Dialogue Memorization
Dialogues
or short conversations between two people are often used to begin a new lesson.
Students memorize the dialogue through mimicry; students usually take the role of one
person in the dialogue, and the teacher the other. After the students have
learned the one person's lines, they switch roles and memorize the other
person's part.
Another
way of practicing the two roles is for half of the class to take one role and
the other half to take the other. After the dialogue has
been memorized, pairs of individual students might perform the dialog
for the rest of the class.
In the Audio-Lingual Method,
certain sentence patterns and grammar points are included within the dialogue. These
patterns and points are later practiced in
drills based on the lines of the dialogue.
Backward Build-up (Expansion) Drill
This
drill is used when a long line of a dialogue is giving students trouble. The
teacher breaks down the line into several parts. The students repeat a part of the
sentence, usually the last phrase of the line. Then, following the teacher's
cue, the students expand what they are repeating part by part until they are
able to repeat the entire line.
The
teacher begins with the part at the end of the sentence (and works
backward from there)
to keep the intonation of the line as natural as possible. This also directs more student attention to the end of
the sentence, where new information
typically occurs.
Repetition Drill
Students
are asked to repeat the teacher's model as accurately and as quickly as possible.
This drill is often used to teach the lines of the dialogue.
Chain Drill
A
chain drill gets its name from the chain of conversation that forms around the room as
students, one-by-one, ask and answer questions of each other. The teacher begins the
chain by greeting a particular student, or
asking him a question. That student responds, then turns to the student sitting next to him. The first
student greets or asks a question of
the second student and the chain continues.
A
chain drill allows some controlled communication, even though it is limited.
A chain drill also
gives the teacher an opportunity to check each student's speech.
Single-slot Substitution Drill
The
teacher says a line, usually from the dialogue. Next, the teacher says a word or a phrase-called
the cue. The students repeat the line the teacher has given
them, substituting the cue into the line in its proper place.
The
major purpose of this drill is to give the students practice in finding and
filling in the slots of a sentence.
Multiple-slot
Substitution Drill
This
drill is similar to the single-slot substitution drill. The difference is that the teacher
gives cue phrases, one at a time, that fit into different slots in the dialog
line. The students must recognize what part of speech each cue is, where
it fits into the sentence, and make any other changes, such as subject-verb
agreement.
Transformation Drill
The
teacher gives students a certain kind of sentence, an affirmative sentence for
example. Students are asked to transform this sentence into a negative
sentence.
Other examples
of transformations are also used (in changing a statement into a question, an
active sentence into a passive one, or direct speech into reported
speech).
Question-and-answer Drill
This
drill gives students practice with answering questions. The students should
answer the teacher's questions very quickly. It is also possible
for the teacher to cue the students to ask questions as well. This
gives students practice with the question pattern.
Use of Minimal Pairs
The
teacher works with pairs of words which differ in only one sound; for example,
"ship/sheep." Students are first asked to perceive the difference between
the two words and later to be able to say the two words. The teacher
selects the sounds to work on after she has done a contrastive analysis, a
comparison between the students' native language and the
language they are studying.
Complete the Dialogue
Selected
words are erased from a dialogue students have learned. Students complete the dialogue
by filling in the blanks with the missing words.
Grammar Game
Games
like the supermarket alphabet game described in this chapter are often used in
the Audio-Lingual Method. The games are designed to get students to
practice a grammar point within a context. Students are able to express
themselves.
Notice there is also a
lot of repetition in the game too.
Types of Learning and Teaching activities
Dialogues
and drills form the basis of audiolingual classroom practices. Dialogues provide the
means of contextualizing key structures and illustrate situations in which
structures might be used as well as some cultural aspects of
the target language. Dialogues
are used for repetition and memorization. Correct
pronunciation, stress, rhythm, and intonation are emphasized.
After a dialogue has been presented and memorized, specific grammatical
patterns in the dialogue are selected and become the focus of various kinds of
drill and pattern-practice exercises.
The use of
drills and pattern practice is a distinctive feature of the Audiolingual Method. Various kinds of drills are
used. Brooks (1964: 156—61) includes the following:
Repetition.
The student
repeats an utterance aloud as soon as he
has heard it. He does this without looking
at a printed text. The utterance must be brief enough to be retained by the
ear. Sound is as important as form and order.
Example.
This is the seventh month. -This is the
seventh month.
After a student has
repeated an utterance, he may repeat it again and add a few words, then repeat that whole
utterance and add more words.
Example.
I used to know him.-I used to know him.
I used to know him years ago. - I used to know him years ago
when we were in school.
Inflection.
One word in an utterance appears in another form when repeated.
Example.
I bought the ticket.-
I bought the tickets.
He bought die candy.-
She bought the candy.
I called die young man.- I called the young men
Replacement.
One word in an utterance is replaced by another.
Example.
He bought this house cheap. - he bought it cheap.
Helen
left
early. – She left early.
They gave their boss
a watch. -They gave him a
watch.
Restatement.
The student rephrases an utterance
and addresses it to someone else, according
to instructions.
Example.
Tell him to wait for
you. - Wait for me.
Ask her how old she
is. - How old are you?
Ask John when he
began. - John, when did you begin?.
Completion
The student hears an utterance that is
complete except for one word, then repeats the utterance in completed form.
Example.
I'll
go my way and you go… - I'll go my way and
you go yours.
We all have ... own troubles. - We all have our own
troubles.
Transposition
A change in word order is
necessary when a word is added.
Example.
I'm hungry, (so). - So am
I.
I'll never do it again, (neither). - Neither
will I.
Expansion
When a word is added it takes a
certain place in the sequence.
Example
I know him. (hardly).- I hardly know him.
I know him. (well). - I
know him well…
Contraction
A single word stands for a phrase or clause.
Example.
Put your hand on
the table. - Put your hand there. They believe that the
earth is flat.- They believe it....
Transformation
A sentence is transformed by being made negative or interrogative or through changes in tense, mood, voice, aspect, or modality.
Example.
He knows
my address.
He doesn't know my address.
He doesn't know my address.
Does he know my address?
He used
to know my address.
If he had known my address.
Integration
Two separate utterances are integrated into one.
Example
They must be honest. This is important.. - It is important that they be honest.
Rejoinder
The student makes an appropriate rejoinder to a given utterance. He is told in advance to respond in one of the following ways;
Be
polite.
Answer the question.
Agree.
Agree emphatically.
Express surprise.
Express regret.
Disagree emphatically. Question what is said. Fail to understand.
Be polite. Examples
Thank you.- You're welcome.
May I take one? - Certainly.
Answer the questions. Examples.
What is your name? - My name
is Smith;
Where did it happen? - In the middle of the street.
Restoration
The student is given a sequence
of words that have been
cut from a sentence but still bear its basic meaning. He uses these
words with a minimum of changes and additions to restore the sentence
to its original form. He may be told whether the time is present, past, or
future.
cut from a sentence but still bear its basic meaning. He uses these
words with a minimum of changes and additions to restore the sentence
to its original form. He may be told whether the time is present, past, or
future.
Example
students/waiting/bus - The students are waiting for
the bus.
boys/build/house/street - The
boys built a house in a street.
Teacher's Role
In
Audiolingualism, as in Situational Language Teaching, the teacher's role is central and
active; it is a teacher-dominated method. The teacher models the target
language, controls the direction and pace of learning, and monitors and
corrects the learners' performance. The teacher must keep the learners
attentive by varying drills and tasks and choosing relevant situations to
practice structures. Language learning is seen to result from active
verbal interaction between the teacher and the learners.
Model the various types of language
behavior that the student is to learn:
- Teach spoken language in dialogue form.
- Direct choral response by all or parts of the class.
- Teach the use of structure through pattern practice.
- Guide the student in choosing and learning vocabulary.
- Show how words relate to meaning in the target language.
- Get the individual student to talk.
- Reward trials by the student in such a way that learning is reinforced.
- Teach a short story and other literary forms.
- Establish and maintain a cultural island.
- Formalize on the first day the rules according to which the language class is
- to be
conducted, and enforce them.[3]
...
The Role of
Instructional Materials
Instructional
materials in the Audiolingual Method assist the teacher to develop language
mastery in the learner. They are primarily teacher oriented. A student
textbook is often not used in the elementary phases of a course where students
are primarily listening, repeating, and responding. At this stage in learning,
exposure to the printed word may not be
considered desirable, because it distracts attention from the aural input. The
teacher, however, will have access to a teacher's book that contains the structured sequence of lessons to be
followed and the dialogues, drills, and other practice activities. When
textbooks and printed materials are introduced to the student, they
provide the texts of dialogues and cues
needed for drills and exercises.
Tape recorders
and audiovisual equipment often have central roles in an audiolingual course.
If the teacher is not a native speaker of the target language, the tape recorder provides accurate
models for dialogues and drills. A
language laboratory may also be considered essential. It provides the
opportunity for further drill work and to receive controlled error-free practice of basic structures. It also adds
variety by providing an alternative
to classroom practice.
A
taped lesson may first present a dialogue for listening practice,
allow for the student to repeat the sentences in the dialogue line by line,
and provide follow-up fluency drills on grammar or pronunciation.
P.s
In a typical audiolingual lesson
the following procedures would be observed:
1.
Students first hear a model
dialogue (either read by the teacher or on the tape) containing the
key structures that are the focus of the lesson. They repeat each line of the dialogue,
individually and in chorus. The teacher pays
attention to pronunciation, intonation, and fluency. Correction of mistakes
of pronunciation or grammar is direct and immediate. The dialogue is memorized gradually, line by line. A
line may be broken down into several phrases if necessary. The dialogue is read
aloud in chorus, one half saying one speaker's part and the other half
responding. The students do not consult
their book throughout this phase.
2. The dialogue is adapted
to the students' interest or situation, through
changing certain key .words or phrases. This is acted out by the students.
changing certain key .words or phrases. This is acted out by the students.
3. Certain key
structures from the dialogue are selected and used as the basis
for pattern drills of different kinds. These are first practiced in chorus and then individually. Some grammatical explanation may be offered at this point, but this is kept to an absolute minimum.
for pattern drills of different kinds. These are first practiced in chorus and then individually. Some grammatical explanation may be offered at this point, but this is kept to an absolute minimum.
4; The students may refer to their textbook, and
follow-up reading, writing, or vocabulary
activities based on the dialogue may be introduced. At the beginning level, writing is purely imitative and
consists of little more than copying
out sentences that have been practiced. As
proficiency increases, students may write out variations of structural
items they have practiced or write short
compositions on given topics with the help of framing questions, which will
guide their use of the language.
5. Follow-up activities may take
place in the language laboratory, where further dialogue and drill work is carried
out.
The Decline of Audiolingualism
Audiolingualism reached its period
of most widespread use in the 1960s
and was applied both to the teaching of foreign languages in the United
States and to the teaching of English as a second or foreign language.
and was applied both to the teaching of foreign languages in the United
States and to the teaching of English as a second or foreign language.
On the
one hand, the theoretical foundations of Audiolingualism were
attacked as eing unsound both in terms of language theory
and learning theory. On the other, practitioners foundthat the practical
results fell short of expectations. Students were often found to be unable to
transfer skills acquired through Audiolingualism to real communication
outside the classroom, and many found the. experience of studying
through audiolingual procedures to be boring and unsatisfying.
The theoretical attack on
audiolingual beliefs resulted from changes in American linguistic
theory in the sixties. The MIT linguist N. Chomsky rejected the
structuralist approach to language description as well as the behaviorist theory of language
learning. "Language is not a habit structure.
Ordinary linguistic behavior characteristically involves innovation, formation of new sentences and patterns in
accordance with rules of great
abstractness and intricacy" (Chomsky 1966: 153). Chomsky's theory of transformational grammar proposed that,
the fundamental properties of
language derive from innate aspects of the mind and from how humans process experience through language.
His theories were to revolutionize
American linguistics and focus the attention of linguists and psychologists on the mental properties people
bring to bear on language use and
language learning. Chomsky also proposed an alternative theory of language learning to that of the behaviorists.
Behaviorism regarded language learning as similar in principle to any other
kind of learning. It was subject to
the same laws of stimulus and response, reinforcement and association. Chomsky argued that such a learning
theory could not possibly serve as a
model of how humans learn language, since much of human language use is not imitated behavior but is
created anew from underlying
knowledge of abstract rules. Sentences are not learned by imitation and repetition but "generated"
from the learner's underlying "competence."
Practice
activities should involve meaningful learning and language use. Learners should be encouraged to use their innate and creative
abilities to make explicit underlying
the grammatical rules of the
language. For a time in the early seventies there was a considerable interest in the implication of the cognitive-code
theory for language caching (e.g., see
Jakobovits 1970; Lugton 1971). But no clear-cut methodological guidelines emerged, nor did any particular method incorporating
this view of learning. The term cognitive code is still sometimes invoked to refer to any conscious attempt to
organize materials around a
grammatical syllabus while allowing for meaningful practice and use of language. The lack of an alternative to
Audiolingualism in language teaching in the United States has led to a period
of adaptation, innovation, experimentation,
and some confusion.
On the one hand there are few methods that have
been developed independently of current linguistic and second
language acquisition theory (e.g., Total Physical Response, Silent Way, Counseling-Learning); on
the other there are competing approaches that are derived from contemporary
theories of language and second language
acquisition (e.g., The Natural Approach,
Communicative Language Teaching). These
developments will be considered in the remaining chapters of my lectures.
[1] Dianne Larsen -Freeman,
Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching, Oxford University Press, 1986,
p. 31-51
[2] J. C. Richard and Theodore S.
Rodgers, Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching Cambridge University
Press, 1997, p.48-61.
[3] Brooks N., 1964, Language and Language Learning: Theory and Practice, 2nd
ed., New York,
Holt, p. 111
