Chapter 4: The Audio-Lingual Method

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Chapter 4 The Audio-Lingual Method

• Textbook
• Larsen-Freeman, D. (2000). Techniques and
  Principles in Language Teaching. (2th ed.).
  Oxford University Press.

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Introduction

• Audio-Lingual Method is an oral-based approach.
• It drills students in the use of grammatical
  sentence patterns.
• Based on behavioral psychology (Skinner).
• Conditioning ?helping learners to respond
  correctly to stimuli through shaping and
  reinforcement.
• Habit-formation

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A dialog from the text

• Sally Good morning, Bill.
• Bill Good morning, Sally.
• Sally How are you?
• Bill Fine, Thanks, And you?
• Sally Fine. Where are you going?
• Bill Im going to the post office.
• Sally I am too. Shall we go together?
• Sure. Lets go.

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Im going to the post office.

• 1. introduces a new dialog (p36)
• 2. uses a backward build-up drill
• 3. uses a repetition drill (group)
• 4. initiates a chain drill (individual)
• 5. leads a single-slot substitution drill
  (replaces a word or phrase cue) (shows
  pictures)
• 6. praise the class during the practice

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How are you? (Subject-verb agreement)

• 1. subject pronouns (he, she, they, you)
• 2. be verb (is, are)
• 3. uses Multiple-slot Substitution drill
• (I am/ She is going to the post office)
• 4. uses a transformation drill (active vs.
  passive yes/no-question)
• 5. uses pictures again and select individuals

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More practices

• 1. reviews the dialog
• 2. expands upon the dialog by adding a few lines.
• 3. drills the new lines and introduces new
  vocabulary (p.41)
• 4. works on the mass and count nouns (a little/a
  few)
• 5. uses contrastive analysis (correct the
  pronunciation) (use of minimal pairs)

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More practices

• 6. writes the dialog on the blackboard
• 7. uses the supermarket alphabet (grammar
  game)

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Goals

• Teachers want their students to be able to use
  the target language communicatively.
• Overlearning ?automatically without stopping to
  think
• Forming new habits through overcoming the old
  habit.

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Teacher Role/Student Role

• The teacher is like an orchestra leader.
• Providing students with a good model for
  imitation.
• Students are imitators.

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Characteristics of the teaching/learning process

• New vocabulary and structural patterns are
  presented through dialogs.
• Dialogs learning through imitation and
  repetition
• Positively reinforced
• Grammar is induced from the examples.

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Student-teacher interaction/ student-student
interaction

• Interaction is teacher-directed
• Student-student interaction ?Chain drills and
  dialogues

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The view of language/ the view of culture

• The view of language ? be influenced by
  descriptive linguists.
• Each level( phonological, morphological)has its
  own distinctive patterns.
• Everyday speech is emphasized.
• The level of complexity of the speech is graded.

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What areas of language are emphasized? What
language skills are emphasized?

• Vocabulary is kept to a minimum while the
  students are mastering the sound system and
  grammatical patterns.
• The natural order of skills presentation is
  adhered to listening, speaking, reading, and
  writing.
• The oral/aural skills receive most of the
  attention .

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The role of native language

• The habits of the students native language are
  thought to interfere with the students attempts
  to master the target language.
• The target language is mostly used in the
  classroom instead of the native language.

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Evaluation

• Nature discrete-point
• ?each question on the test would focus on only
  one point of the language at a time.
• Ex students might be asked to distinguish
  between words in a minimal pair.

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Deal with errors

• Students errors are to be avoided if at all
  possible through the teachers awareness of where
  the students will have difficulty and restriction
  of what they are taught to say.