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Larsen-Freeman, D. (2000). Techniques and principles o/language
teaching (2 nd^ ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
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The Audio-Lingual Method
INTRODUCTION
The Audio-Lingual Method, like the Direct Method we have just exam- ined, 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. It also, unlike the Direct Method, has a strong theoretical base in linguistics and psychology, Charles Fries (1945) the University of Michigan led the way in applying principles structural linguistics in developing the method, and for this reason, it has sometimes been referred to as the 'Michigan Method.' Later in its devel- opment, principles from behavioral psychology (Skinner 1957) were incorporated. It was thought that the way to acquire the sentence pat- terns of the target language was th:rough conditioning-helping learners to respond correctly to stimuli through shaping and reinforcement. Learners could overcome the habits of their native language and form the new habits required to be target language speakers. In order to come to an understanding of this method, let us now enter a classroom where the Audio-Lingual Method is being used. We will sit in on a beginning level English class in Mali. There are thirty-four students, thirteen to fifteen years of age. The class meets for one hour a day, five days a week.
EXPERIENCE
As we enter the classroom, the first thing we notice is that the students are attentively listening as the teacher is presenting a new dialog, a conversa- tion between two people. The students know tbey will be expected to eventually memorize the dialog the teacher is introducing. All of the teacher's instructions are in English. Sometimes she uses actions to con- vey meaning, but not one word of the students' native language is uttered. she acts out the dialog, she says: 'All right, class. I am going to repeat the dialog now. Listen carefully, but no talking please.
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36 The Audio-Ungual Method
Two people are walking along a sidewalk in town. They know each other, and as they meet, they stop to talk. One of them is named Sally and the other one is named Bill. 1 will talk for Sally and for Bill. Listen to conversation:
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. Listen one more time. This time try to understand all that I am saying.' Now she has the whole class repeat each of the lines of the dialog after her model. They repeat each line several times before moving on to the next line. When the class comes to the line, 'I'm going to the post office,' they stumble a bit in their repetition. The teacher, at this point, stops the repetition and uses a backward build-up drill (expansion drill). The pur- pose of this drill is to break down the troublesome senterice into smaller parts. The teacher starts with the end of the sentence and has the class repeat just the last two words. Since they can do this, the teacher adds a few more words, and the class repeats this expanded phrase. Little by lit- tle the teacher builds up the phrases until the entire sentence is being repeated. jTEAC H ER Repeat after me: post office. 'c LA S s Post office. rEA C HER To the post offic.e. FLASS To the post office. lrEACHER Going to the post office. Ie LA S S Going to the post office. \rEACHER I'm going to the post office. C LA S S I'm going to the post office. Through this step-by-step procedure, the teacher is able to give the stu- dents help in producing the troublesome line. Having worked on the line. in small pieces, the students are also able to take note of where each word or phrase begins and ends in the sentence. After the students have repeated the dialog several times, the teacher gives them a chance to adopt the role of Bill while she says Sally's Before the class actually says each line, the teacher models it. In effect, the
The Audio-Ungual Method 37
class is experiencing a repetition drill where the task is to listen carefully and attempt to mimic the teacher's model as accurately as possible. Next the class and the teacher switch roles in order to practice a little more, the teacher saying Bill's lines and the class saying Sally's. Then the teacher divides the class in half so that each half gets to try to say on own either Bill's or Sally's lines. The teacher stops the students from time to time when she feels they are straying too far from the model, and once again provides a model, which she has them attempt to copy. To further practice the lines ·of this dialog, the teacher has all the boys in the class take Bill's part and all the girls take Sally's. She then initiates a chain drill with four of the lines from the dialog. A chain drill gives students an opportunity to say the lines individually. teacher listens and can tell which students are struggling and will need more practice. A chain drill also lets students use the expressions in com- munication with someone else, even though the communication is very limited. The teacher addresses the student nearest her with, 'Good morn- ing, Jose.' He, in turn, responds, 'Good morning, teacher.' She says, 'How are you?' Jose answers, 'Fine, thanks. And you?' The teacher replies, 'Fine.' He understands through the teacher's gestures that he is to turn to student sitting beside hiIlJ and her. That student, in turn, says her lines in reply to him. When she has finished, she greets the student on the other side of her. This chain continues until all of the students have a chance to ask and answer the questions. The last student directs the greet- ing to the teacher. Finally, the teacher selects two students to perform the entire dialog for rest of the class. When they are finished, two others do the same. Not everyone has a 'chance to say the dialog in a pair today, but perhaps they some time this week. teacher moves next to the second major phase of the lesson. She continues to drill the students with language from the dialog, but these drills require more than simple repetition. The first drill the teacher leads is a single-slot substitution drill in which the students will repeat a sen- tence from the dialog and replace a word or phrase in the sentence the word or phrase the teacher gives them. This word or phrase is called the cue. teacher begins by reciting a line from the dialog, '1 am going to the post office.' Following this she shows the students a picture of a bank and says the phrase, 'The bank.' She pauses, then says, 'I am going to the bank.' From her example the students realize that they are supposed to take the cue phrase ('the bank'), which the teacher supplies, and put it into its proper place in the sentence.
40 Audio-Lingual Method
to selected individuals rapidly, one after another. The students are expected to respond very quickly, without The students are able to keep up the pace, so the moves on to the next step. She again shows the class one of the pictures, a supermarket this time. She asks, 'Are you going to the bus station?' She answers her own question, 'No, I am going to the supermarket.' The students understand that they are required to look at the picture and listen to the question and answer negatively if the place in the ques- tion is not the same as what they see in the picture. 'Are you going to the bus station?' The teacher asks while holding up a picture of a cafe. 'No, I am going to the cafe,' the class answers. 'Very good!' exclaims the teacher. After posing a few more questions negative answers, the teacher produces the pictures of the post office and asks, 'Are you going to the post office?' The students hesi- tate a moment and then chorus, 'Yes, I am going to the post office.' 'Good,' comments the teacher. She works a little on this ques- tion-and-answer drill, sometimes providing her students with situations that require a negative answer and sometimes encouragement to each student. She holds up pictures and poses questions one right after another, but the students seem to have no trouble keeping up with her. The only time she changes the rhythm is when a student seriously mispro- nounces a word. When this occurs she restates the word and works briefly with the student until his pronunciation is closer to her own. For the final few minutes of the class, the teacher returns to the dialog with which she began the lesson. She repeats it once, then has the half of class to her left do Bill's lines and the half of the class to her right do time there is no hesitation at all. The students move through trade roles and do the same. The teacher smiles, 'Very good. Class dismissed.' The lesson ends for the day. Both the teacher and the students have worked hard. The students have listened to and spoken only English the period. The teacher is tired from all her action, but she is pleased for she feels the lesson has gone well. The students have learned the lines of the dialog and to respond without hesitation to her cues in the drill pattern. In lessons later this week the teacher will do the following: 1 Review the dialog. 2 Expand upon the dialog by adding a few more lines, such as 'I am going to the post office. I need a few stamps.'
3 and introduce some new vocabulary items through
the new example:
The Audio-Lingual Method 41
'I am going to the supermarket. I need a little butter.' , ... library. (^) ... few books.' , drugstore. (^) medicine.' 4 Work on the between mass count nouns, contrasting 'a few' with mass and count nouns No grammar rule will ever be given to the students. The SiUUClm; be led to figure out the rules from their work with the examples 5 A contrastive analysis (the comparison of two languages, in thIS case, the students' native language and the target language, English) has led the teacher to expect that the students will have special trouble with the pronunciation of words such as 'little,' which contain N. The stu- dents do indeed say the word as if it contained fiy/. As a result, the teacher works on the contrast between fiy! and /I! several times during the week. She uses minimal-pair words, such as 'sheep,' 'ship'; 'leav"e,' and 'he's,' 'his' to get her students to hear the difference in lciation between the words in each pair. Then, when she feel~ them in saying the two sounds-first bv them- and later in words, phrases, and sentences. 6 Sometime towards the end of the week the blackboard. She asks the students to give her the lines and she writes them out as the students say them. They copy the dialog in notebooks. They also do some limited written work with the dialog. In one exercise the teacher has erased fifteen selected words from the. expanded dialog. The students have to rewrite the dialog in their note- books, supplying the missing words without looking at th~ ~omplete dialog they copied earlier. In another exercise, the students are given sequences of words such as I, go, supermarket and he, need, butter and they are asked to write complete sentences like the ones they have been orally. 7 On Friday the teacher leads the class in the 'supermarket alphabet game.' The game starts with a student who needs a food item begin- ning with the letter 'A.' The student says, ~1 am going to the supermar- ket. I need a few apples.' The next student says, 'I am going to the supermarket. He needs a few apples. I need a little bread (or "a bananas" or any other food item you could find in the supermarket beginning with the letter "B").' The third student continues, ~I am going to the supermarket. He needs a few apples. She needs a little bread. I need a little cheese.' The game continues with each player adding an item that begins with the next letter in the alphabet. Before adding his own item, however, each player must mention the items of
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42 The Audio-Lingual Method
the other students before him. If the student has difficulty thinking of an item, the other students or the teacher helps. 8 A presentation by the teacher on supermarkets in the United States fol- lows the game. The teacher tries very hard to get meaning across in English. The teacher answers the student's questions about the differ- ences between supermarkets in the United States and open-air markets in Mali. They also discuss briefly the differences between American and Malian football. The students seem very interested in the discus- sion. The teacher promises to continue the discussion of popular American sports next week.
THINKING ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE
Although it is true that this was a very brief experience with the Audio- Lingual Method, let's see if we can make some observations about the behavior of the teacher and the techniques she used. From these we should be able to figure out the principles underlying the method. We will make our observations in order, following the lesson plan of the class we observed.
Observations Principles 1 The teacher introduces a new Language forms do not occur by dialog. themselves; they occur most naturally within a context.
2 The language teacher uses .only The native language and the targe,t the target language in the language have separatelin~!stic classroorri. Actions, pictures, or systems. They should be kept realia are used to give meaning apart so that the students' native otherwise. language interferes as little as possible with the students' attempts to acquire the target language.
3 The language teacher intro- One of the language teacher's duces the dialog by modeling it major roles is that of a model of two times; she introduces the the target language. Teachers drills by modeling the correct should provide students with a answers; at other times, she good model. By listening to how it corrects mispronunciation by is supposed to sound, students n10deling the proper sounds in should be able to .mimic,the...model. the target language.
Observations 4 The students repeat each line of the new dialog several times.
S The students stumble over one of the lines of the dialog. The teacher uses a backward build- up drill with this line.
6 The teacher initiates a chain drill in which each student greets another.
7 The teacher uses single-slot and multiple-slot substitution drills.
8 The teacher says, 'Very good,' when the students answer correctly.
9 The teacher uses spoken cues and picture cues.
10 The teacher conducts transformation and question- and-answer drills.
11 When the students can handle it, the teacher poses the questions to them rapidly.
The Audio-Lingual Method 43
Principles Language learning is a process of habit formation. The more often something is repeated, the stronger the habit and the greater the learning.
It is important to prevent learners from making errors. Errors lead to the formation of bad habits. When errors do occur, they should be im- mediately corrected by the teacher.
The purpose of language learning is to learn how to use the language to communicate.
Particular parts of speech occupy particular 'slots' in sentences. In order to create new sentences, students must learn which part of speech occupies which slot.
Positive reinforcement helps the students to 4evelop correct habits.
Students should learn to respond to both verbal and nonverbal stimuli.
Each language has a finite number of patterns.l?attern practice heJps students to form habits which enable the students to use the patterns.
Students should 'overlearn,' i.e. learn to answer automatically without stopping to think'.
46 The Audio-Lingual Method
contextualized in the dialogs 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 dialogs, 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 method that relate to this area.
6 How is the language viewed? How is the culture viewed?
The view of language in the Audio-Lingual Method has been enced by descriptive linguists. Every language is seen as having its own unique system. The system is comprised of several different levels: phonological, morphological, and syntactic. Each level has its own dis- tinctive patterns. Everyday speech is emphasized in the Audio"Lingual Method. The level of complexity ofthe speech is graded, however, so that begin- ning students are presented with only simple patterns. Culture consists 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
The Audio-Lingual Method 47
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 lan- guage 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 did not 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 ques- tion 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 (^) possible through the teacher's awareness of where the students (^) ha ve difficulty and restriction
. what they are taught to say.
REVIEWING THE TECHNIQUES
agree with the above answers, you may wish to implement the follow- ing techniques; of course, even if you do not agree, there may be techniques described below that you are already lIsing or can adapt to your approach.
Dialog memorization Dialogs or short conversations between two people are often to begin a new lesson. Students memorize the dialog through dents usually take the role of one person in the dialog, and other. After the students have learned the one person's lines, they switch 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 dialog has been memorized, pairs of individual stu- dents might perform the dialog for the rest of the class. In the Audio-Lingual Method, certain sentence patterns and grammar points are included within the dialog. These patterns and points are later practiced in drills based on the lines of the dialog.
48 The Audio-Lingual Method
Backward build-up (expansion) drill
This drill is used when a long line of a dialog is giving students trouble. The teacher breaks down the line into several parts. Thestudents repeat a part of the sentence, usually the last phrase of the line. Then, following th~ teacher's cue, the students expand whatthey are repeating part by part until are ableto repeat the entire line. The teacher begins with the part at the end of the sentence (and works backward from there) to keep the into- nation of the line as natural as possible. This also directs more student attention to the endof 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 dialog.
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 ilsking 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 sec- ond 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 dialog. 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 dialog line. The students must recognize what part of speech each cue is, or at least, where it fits into the sentence, and make any o.rher changes, such as subject-verb agreement. They then say the line, fitting the cue phrase into the line where it belongs.
The Audio-Lingual Method 49
Transformation drill
The teacher gives students a certain kind of sentence pattern, an affirma- twe sentence for example. Students are asked to transform this sentence into a negative sentence. Other examples of transformations to ask of stu- dents are changing a statement into a question, an active sentence into a passive one, or direct speech into reported speech;
Question-and-answer drill
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 s.tudents practice with the question pattern.
Use of minimal pairs
The teacher works with pairs of words which differ in only One sound; 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 a comparison between the students' native language and the
. language they are studying.
Complete the dialog
Selected words are erased from a dialog students have learned. Students complete the dialog 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 stu- dents to practice a grammar point within a context. Students are able to express themselves, although it is rather limited in this game. Notice there is also a lot of repetition in this game.
CONCLUSION
We've looked at both the techniques and the principles of the Audio- Lingual Method. Try now to make the bridge between this book and your teaching 'Situation. Does it make sense to you that language acquisition results from habit
