The Audio-Lingual Method

Dr. Chifen Chen

Introduction

Founded around 1950’s and 1960’s, AL was based on an : the way to acquire the sentence patterns of the target language is repetition of dialogues about every day situations that are imitated and drilled to make the response automatic.

structural linguistic behavioral psychology

Structural Linguistic

Language is a system of structural related elements, like phonological units, grammatical units, and lexical items, for the transmission of meaning. So to learn the target language is to mater the elements of the target language system.

Behavioral Psychology Language learning is habit-formation.Mistakes, the bad habit, should be

avoided.Language skills are learned more

effectively if they are presented orally first, then in written form.

The meaning of words can be learned only in a linguistic and cultural context.

Principles of AL

Use drills to teach the lines of dialogues.

Repeat the language mode as accurately and quickly as possible.

Techniques of AL – Backward-up drill Backward build-up drill: to teach long

lines of dialogues: break down the line into several parts repeat a part of the sentence follow the teacher, students expand

what they repeated part by part until

they are able repeat the entire line.

Techniques of AL – Dialog Memorization Students take the role of one person in the

dialogue and the teacher the other. Switch roles and memorize the other

person’s part. Half of the class to take one role and the

other half to take the other. Some pairs of students might perform the

dialogue for the rest of the class.

Techniques of AL – Chain Drill

To make students ask and answer questions with each other.

It allows some controlled communication among students and give the teacher an opportunity to check students’ speech.

Techniques of AL – Multiple-slot Substitution Drill

To give cue phrases, one at time, that fits into different slots in the dialogue line.

To recognize what part if speech each cue is and make any other changes, such as subject-verb agreement.

To fit cue phrase into line where it belongs and to say the line loudly.

Techniques of AL – Transformation Drill To change a certain kind of sentence

pattern to another form. to transform an affirmative S. into a

negative S. to transform a statement into a question. to transform an active S. into a passive S. to transform a direct speech into reported

speech

Techniques of AL – Question & Answer Drill

Students practice the target language with answering questions and the question patterns.

Students answer the teacher’s question quickly.