THE AUDIO-LINGUAL METHOD

Experience:

Inside the class the students listen with attention at the teacher, expecting to start the class and they already know that they are going to repeat and memorize a dialogue.

The teacher starts by playing a dialogue between 2 friends meeting, he acts is he were both, always using mimics and speaking loud and clear, after ending the dialogue the teacher must repeat the dialogue once again to make things clear for his students.

SALLY: Good morning, Bill.

BILL: Good morning, Sally.

SALLY: How are you?

BILL: Fine, thanks. And you?

SALLY: Fine. Where are you going?

BILL: I’m going to the post office.

SALLY: I am, too. Shall we go together?

BILL: Sure. Let’s go.

Then the teacher makes the whole class repeat each phrase of the dialogue, then she uses drills to makes things even clearer (expansion drill) by making them repeat a key phrase of the dialogue by the end to the start of the sentence., backwards.

After that first drill the teacher makes the class act the dialog by making them speak what one of the friends in the dialogue has to say, then making all the boys talk the dialogues of friend A and making the girls talk the dialogues of friend B, after that he makes two students be friend A and friend B

TEACHER: Repeat after me: post office.

CLASS: Post office.

TEACHER: To the post office.

CLASS: To the post office.

TEACHER: Going to the post office.

CLASS: Going to the post office.

TEACHER: I’m going to the post office.

CLASS: I’m going to the post office.

The second drill (substitution drill) is a bit more complicated to understand ,because the students must replace words with new words just by looking to images all this of course after the teachers says the complete sentence , then must change the key word of the sentence each time the teacher shows them a new image.

Reviewing the Principles:

At this point we should turn to the 10 questions we have answered for each method we have considered so far.

-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.

-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 is also 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.

-What are some characteristics of the teaching/learning process?

New vocabulary and structural patterns are presented through dialogues. The

dialogues 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 dialogue.

-What is the nature of student–teacher interaction? What is the

nature of student–student interaction?

- How are the feelings of the students dealt with?

There are no principles of the method that relate to this area.

-How is the 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 comprises several different levels: phonological, morphological, and

syntactic. Each level has its own distinctive patterns.

-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. A grammatical pattern is not the same as a sentence. For

instance, underlying the following three sentences is the same grammatical pattern:

‘Meg called,’ ‘The Blue Jays won,’ ‘The team practiced.’

The natural order of skills presentation is adhered to: listening, speaking, reading,

and writing. The oral/aural skills receive most of the attention. What students write

they have first been introduced to orally. Pronunciation is taught from the

beginning, often by students working in language laboratories on discriminating

between members of minimal pairs.

-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.

-How is evaluation accomplished?

The answer to this question is not obvious because we didn’t actually observe the

students in this class taking a formal test. If we had, we would have seen that it was

discrete-point in nature, that is, 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.

Reviewing the Techniques:

If you agree with the above answers, you may wish to implement the following

techniques. Of course, even if you do not agree, there may be techniques described

below that you are already using or can adapt to your approach.

• 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 first 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 dialogue 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. 

• 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. 

• 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 dialogue

line. The students must recognize what part of speech each cue is, or at least, where

it fits into the sentence, and make any other changes, such as subject–verb

agreement. They then say the line, fitting the cue phrase into the line where it

belongs.

• Transformation Drill

The teacher gives students a certain kind of sentence pattern, an affirmative

sentence for example. Students are asked to transform this sentence into a negative

sentence. Other examples of transformations to ask of students are: 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. Although we did not see it in our

lesson here, 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 the blanks with the missing words.

• Grammar Game

Games like the Supermarket Alphabet Game described in this chapter are 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, although

in a limited way. Notice there is also a lot of repetition in this game.