Chapter 4: The Audio-Lingual Method
Textbook:
Larsen-Freeman, D. (2000). Techniques and Principles in
Language Teaching. (2th ed.). Oxford University Press.
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
A dialog from the text
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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?
Sure. Let’s go.
I’m 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
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
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)
More practices
6. writes the dialog on the blackboard
7. uses the ‘supermarket alphabet’ (grammar
game)
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.
Teacher Role/Student Role
• The teacher is like an orchestra leader.
• Providing students with a good model for
imitation.
• Students are imitators.
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.
Student-teacher interaction/
student-student interaction
• Interaction is teacher-directed
• Student-student interaction →Chain drills and
dialogues
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.
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 .
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.
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.
Deal with errors
• Students 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.
Brainstorming
• Page 50
• Check your understanding of The AudioLingual Method