Transcript 4.The Audio-Lingual Method

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.