The Audiolingual Method

The Audiolingual Method

1. 3. Objectives

   • Brooks mentions short-term and long-term objectives.
     • Short-term objectives have training in listening comprehension, accurate pronunciation, recognition of speech symbols, "These immediate objectives involve three others: control of sound structures, form and order in the new language; knowledge of vocabulary items that provide content to these structures; and meaning in terms of the significance of these verbal structures.
     • The long-term goals should be language as used by the native speaker. There must be some knowledge of a second language as possessed by a true bilingualist.
   • In practice, this means that in the early stages the focus is on oral skills and gradually with other skills as learning develops. Oral proficiency is equated with accurate pronunciation and grammar and the ability to respond quickly and accurately in speaking situations.

2. 2. Desing

   • The audiolinguists posited the reorientation of the foreign language curriculum and the reformers of the 19th century, advocated a return to speech-based teaching with the primary goal of oral proficiency discarding the study of grammar or literature, "A radical transformation is required, a new orientation of procedures is and a thorough cleansing of methods, materials, texts and tests is inevitable" (Brooks 1964: 50).

3. 1. Approach

   • Theory of Language
     • Those who developed audiolinguism were working in a period when behavioral psychology claimed to have discovered the secrets of all things human learning, including language learning. Behaviorism (the human being is an organism capable of performing a wide repertoire of behaviors) and structural linguistics is an anti-mentalistic, empirically based approach.
     • Reinforcement is a vital element in the learning process, it increases the probability of turning an action into a habit. Language proficiency is represented as the acquisition of a set of appropriate stimulus-response language chains.
     • The psychological foundations of audiolingualism were created and came to shape its methodological practices. Among the most central are the following:
       • 1. Foreign language learning is basically a process of mechanical habit formation.
       • 2. Language skills are best learned if elements of the target language are presented in spoken form before being seen in written form.
       • 3. Analogy provides a better basis for language learning than analysis.
       • 4. The meanings that the words of a language have for the native speaker can only be learned in a linguistic and cultural context, not in isolation.
   • Theory of Learning
     • This theory was derived by American linguists in the 1950s and became known as structural linguistics. Linguistics emerged as an academic discipline in 1950, and structural language theory formed its backbone. Positivism and empiricism drove the reaction against traditional grammar, interest in non-European languages was sparked by Darwin's On the Origin of Species.
     • A new interest in phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax developed thanks to the discovery of new sound types. In the 1930s, it was thought that the study of language involved collecting examples of what speakers said and analyzing them according to different levels of structural organization. A sophisticated methodology was developed to collect and analyze data. Learning a language was assumed to involve mastering the basic elements or components of the language and learning the rules.
     • An important principle of structural linguistics was oral language: speech is language. This scientific approach provided the basis for a scientific approach to language teaching.

4. 4. The Syllabus

   • When reading and writing are introduced, students are taught to read and write what they have already learned to say orally.
   • Recognition and discrimination are followed by imitation, repetition and memorization. Only when he is familiar with sounds, arrangements and forms does he focus his attention on expanding his vocabulary, concentrating on gaining accuracy before striving for fluency.
   • Language skills are taught in the order of listening, speaking, reading and writing. At first they are presented entirely orally, but written representations are generally not made known to learners in the early stages, learner activities should be limited to the auditory-linguistic and gestural-visual bands of language behavior.
   • Audiolingualism is based on structures for language teaching. The starting point is a linguistic syllabus, which contains the key elements of phonology, morphology and syntax of the language arranged according to their order of presentation.

5. 5. Types of Learning and Teaching Activities

   • Dialogues and exercises form the basis of classroom audiolingual practice. Dialogues help contextualize key structures and illustrate situations in which structures might be used, are used for repetition and memorization, emphasizing correct pronunciation, stress, rhythm and intonation. After presenting and memorizing a dialogue, specific grammatical patterns in the dialogue are selected and become the focus of various types of pattern practice exercises.

6. 6. Learner Roles

   • Learners are viewed as organisms to be directed by training techniques to produce correct responses. According to the behaviorist theory of learning, teaching focuses on the external manifestations of learning rather than the internal processes. Learners have a reactive role in responding to stimuli; they have little control over the content, pace or style of learning. They are not encouraged to interact, because it leads to errors.

7. 7. Teacher Roles

   • In Audiolingualism, as in Situational Language Teaching, the role of the teacher is central and active. The teacher models the target language, controls the direction and pace of learning and monitors and corrects the learners' performance, must keep the learners attentive by varying tasks and choosing relevant situations to practice the structures. Language learning is the result of active verbal interaction between the teacher and the learners.
   • The teacher must be able to do the following:
     • Introduce, sustain and harmonize the learning of the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
     • Use (and not use) English in the language classroom.
     • Model the various types of language behavior that the learner must learn.
     • Teaching spoken language in the form of dialogue.
     • Direct response from all or part of the class.
     • Teaching the use of structure through pattern practice.
     • Guide the student in choosing and learning vocabulary.
     • Show how words relate to meaning in the target language.
     • Reward testing done by the student to reinforce learning.
     • Teach a story and other literary forms Establish and maintain a cultural island.
     • Formalize on the first day the rules according to which the language class will be conducted, and enforce them.
   • The didactic materials in the Audiolingual Method help the teacher to develop the student's language proficiency.

8. 8. Procedure

   • Because audiolingualism is primarily an oral approach to language teaching, the teaching process involves extensive oral instruction, focusing on immediate and accurate speech; there is little provision for grammatical explanations or talk about the language. The target language is used as the medium of instruction and translation or use of the mother tongue is discouraged.
   • Brooks (1964: 142) lists the following procedures that the teacher should adopt when using the Audiolingual Method: The modeling of all learning by the teacher.
     • The subordination of the mother tongue to the second language.
     • Early and continuous training of the ear and language without resorting to graphic techniques.
     • The learning of structure through the practice of patterns of sound, order and form.
     • Gradual substitution of sounds for graphic symbols once the sounds are known.
     • Summarizing the fundamental principles of structure for the student's use.
     • The shortening of the time lapse between a performance and the utterance of its correctness or error, without interrupting the response.
     • Minimizing vocabulary until all common structures have been learned.
     • Vocabulary study only in context.
     • Sustained practice in using the language only in the molecular form of speaker-hearer situation.
     • Translation practice only as an advanced level literary exercise.

9. 9. The Decline of Audiolingualism

   • Audiolingualism reached its period of most widespread use in the 1960s and was applied to both teaching foreign languages in the United States and teaching English as a second or foreign language, practitioners found that the practical results did not meet expectations. Students were often found to be unable to transfer the skills acquired through audiolingualism to actual communication outside the classroom, and many found the experience boring.
   • Language is not a habit structure. Chomsky's transformational grammar theory proposed that the fundamental properties of language are derived from innate aspects of the mind and how humans process experience through language.
   • The lack of an alternative to audiolingualism led in the 1970s and 1980s to a period of adaptation, innovation, experimentation, and some confusion. In the 1970s several alternative method proposals appeared that did not claim any link to conventional language teaching. These methods attracted some interest at first, but have not continued to attract significant levels of acceptance. Since then, other proposals have reflected developments in general education and other fields outside the second language teaching community, such as language.

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