The Audio Lingual

method
Introduction
• The Audio-Lingual Method, like the Direct Method, is also an oral-based
approach.
• However, it is very different, in that rather than emphasizing vocabulary
acquisition through exposure to its use in situations, the Audio-Lingual Method
drills students in the use of grammatical sentence patterns.
• Also, unlike the Direct Method, it has a strong theoretical base in linguistics and
psychology. Charles Fries (1945) of the University of Michigan led the way in
applying principles from structural linguistics in developing the method, and for
this reason, it has sometimes been referred to as the ‘Michigan Method.’
• Later in its development, principles from behavioral psychology (Skinner 1957)
were incorporated. It was thought that the way to acquire the sentence patterns of
the target language was through conditioning helping learners to respond
correctly to stimuli through shaping and reinforcement, so that the learners could
overcome the habits of their native language and form the new habits required to
be target language speakers.
A demonstration
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz0TPDUz3FU
 The principles of ALM
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 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.
3- 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.
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 dialogues 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 dialogues, 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 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. 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
patterns.
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?

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.
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?

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.
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 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. 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 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.
Discussion
• Does it make sense to you that language acquisition results from habit formation?
If so, will the habits of the native language interfere with target language
learning?
• Should errors be prevented as much as possible?
• Is a dialogue a useful way to introduce new material? Should it be memorized
through mimicry of the teacher’s model?
• Are structure drills valuable pedagogical activities?
• Is working on pronunciation through minimal-pair drills a worthwhile activity?
• Would you say these techniques (or any others of this method) are ones that you
can use as described?