the audiolingual method

4 The Audio-Lingual Method (Pages 35-51)
1- Compare and contrast the Direct Method and the Audio-Lingual Method.
(1) Both are oral-based approaches.
(2) The Direct Method emphasizes vocabulary acquisition through exposure to its use in
situations; the Audio-Lingual Method drills students in the use of grammatical sentence
patterns.
(3) Unlike the Direct Method, the Audio-Lingual Method has a strong theoretical base in
linguistics and psychology.
2- How has the behavioral psychology influenced the Audio-Lingual Method?
(1) 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.
(2) Learners could overcome the habits of their native language and form the new habits
required to be target language speakers.
3- Define a backward build-up drill (expansion drill). State its purpose and
advantages.
(1) Definition: The teacher breaks down a 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.
(2) Purpose: The purpose of this drill is to break down the troublesome sentence into
smaller parts.
(3) Advantages: (a) The teacher is able to give the students help in producing the
troublesome line. (b) 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.
4- Define a repetition drill.
Students are asked to listen carefully to the teacher's model, and then they have to repeat
and attempt to mimic the model as accurately and as quickly as possible.
5- Define a chain drill. State its advantages.
(1) Definition: The chain of conversation that forms around the room as students, oneby-
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, and then turns to the
student sitting next to him.
(2) Advantages: (A) A chain drill gives students an opportunity to say the lines
individually. (B) The teacher listens and can tell which students are struggling and will
need more practice. (C) A chain drill also lets students use the expressions in communication
with someone else, even though the communication is very limited.
6- Define a single-slot substitution drill. State its purpose.
(1) Definition: 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.
(2) Purpose: The major purpose of this drill is to give the students practice in finding
and filling in the slots of a sentence.
7- Define a multiple-slot substitution drill. State its purpose.
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 other changes, such as subject-verb agreement. They then say the line,
fitting the cue phrase into the line where it belongs.
8- Define transformation drill.
Students are asked to change one type of sentence into another—an affirmative sentence
into a negative or an active sentence into a passive.
9- Define Question-and-answer drill.
This drill gives students practice with answering questions. The students should answer
the teacher's questions very quickly.
10- Define contrastive analysis.
Contrastive analysis is the comparison of two languages (a comparison between the
students' native language and the language they are studying).
11- What is the importance of contrastive analysis in the Audio-Lingual Method?
It helps the teacher to locate the places where s/he anticipates her/his students will have
trouble. Also, a contrastive analysis between the students’ native language and the target
language will reveal where a teacher should expect the most interference.
12- State the main principles of the Audio-Lingual Method.
1) Language forms do not occur by themselves; they occur most naturally within a
context.
2) One of the language teacher's major roles is that of a model of the target language.
3) Language learning is a process of habit formation.
4) It is important to prevent learners from making errors. Errors lead to the formation of
bad habits.
5) Positive reinforcement helps the students to develop correct habits.
6) Students should 'overlearn,' i.e. learn to answer automatically without stopping to
think.
7) Students should acquire the structural patterns; students will learn vocabulary
afterward.
8) The learning of a foreign language should be the same as the acquisition of the native
language.
9) Speech is more basic to language than the written form. The 'natural order’ of skill
acquisition is: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
10) Language cannot be separated from culture. Culture is the everyday behavior of the
people who use the target language.
13- What are the goals of teachers who use the Audio-Lingual Method?
(1) Teachers want their students to be able to use the target language communicatively.
(2) Students need to overlearn the target language.
(3) Students need to learn to use the target language automatically without stopping to
think.
(4) Students achieve this by forming new habits in the target language and overcoming
the old habits of their native language.
14- What is the role of the teacher? What is the role of the students?
(1) The teacher is like an orchestra leader, directing and controlling the language
behavior of her students.
(2) The teacher is also responsible for providing students with a good model for
imitation.
(3) Students are imitators of the teacher's model or the tapes the teacher supplies of
model speakers.
(4) Students follow the teacher's directions and respond as accurately and as rapidly as
possible.
15- What are some characteristics of the teaching/learning process?
(1) New vocabulary and structural patterns are presented through dialogs.
(2) The dialogs are learned through imitation and repetition.
(3) Drills are conducted based upon the patterns present in the dialog.
(4) Students' successful responses are positively reinforced.
(5) Grammar is induced from the examples given; explicit grammar rules are not
provided.
(6) Cultural information is contextualized in the dialogs or presented by the teacher.
(7) Students’ reading and written work is based upon the oral work they did earlier.
16- 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.
17- How is the language viewed? How is the culture viewed?
(1) Every language is seen as having its own unique system.
(2) The system is comprised of several different levels: phonological, morphological,
and syntactic. Each level has its own distinctive patterns.
(3) Everyday speech is emphasized in the Audio-Lingual Method.
(4) The level of complexity of the speech is graded, however, so that beginning students
are presented with only simple patterns.
(5) Culture consists of the everyday behavior and lifestyle of the target language
speakers.
18- What areas of language are emphasized? What language skills are emphasized?
(1) Vocabulary is kept to a minimum while the students are mastering the sound system
and grammatical patterns.
(2) 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.
(3) The natural order of skills presentation is adhered to: listening, speaking, reading,
and writing.
(4) The oral/aural skills receive most of the attention.
(5) What students write they have first been introduced to orally.
(6) Pronunciation is taught from the beginning, often by students working in language
laboratories on discriminating between members of minimal pairs.
19- What is the role of the students' native language?
(1) 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.
(2) A contrastive analysis between the students’ native language and the target language
will reveal where a teacher should expect the most interference.
20- How is evaluation accomplished?
It would be 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.
21- 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.
22- What are the main techniques associated with the Audio-Lingual Method?
23- Discuss …………….. as a technique of the Audio-Lingual Method.
1) Dialog memorization
a) Dialogs or short conversations between two people are often used to begin a new
lesson.
b) Students memorize the dialog through mimicry.
c) In the Audio-Lingual Method, certain sentence patterns and grammar points are
included within the dialog.
d) These patterns and points are later practiced in drills based on the lines of the dialog.
2) Backward build-up (expansion) drill (see question No. 3)
3) Repetition drill (see question No. 4)
4) Chain drill (see question No. 5)
5) Single-slot substitution drill (see question No. 6)
6) Multiple-slot substitution drill (see question No. 7)
7) Transformation drill (see question No. 8)
8) Question-and-answer drill (see question No. 9)
9) 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
s/he has done a contrastive analysis.
10) 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.
11) Grammar game
Games 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 it is rather limited in this game. There is also a lot of repetition in this game.
24- Highlights of the Audio-Lingual Method.
(1) Language acquisition results from habit formation.
(2) The habits of the native language will interfere with target language learning.
(3) The commission of errors should be prevented as much as possible.
(4) The major focus should be on the structural patterns of the target language.
(5) A dialog is a useful way to introduce new material.
(6) A dialog should be memorized through mimicry of the teacher's model.
(7) Structure drills are valuable pedagogical activities.
(8) Working on pronunciation through minimal-pair drills is a worthwhile activity.