Chapter 4 Audio-Lingual Method PDF

Chapter 4 Audio-Lingual Method Textbook: Larsen-Freeman, D. (2011). Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.  Background  The Audio-Lingual Method, like the Direct Method, is also an oral-based approach.  However, it is very different, in t...

Chapter 4 Audio-Lingual Method Textbook: Larsen-Freeman, D. (2011). Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.  Background  The Audio-Lingual Method, like the Direct Method, 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.  Also, unlike the Direct Method, it has a strong theoretical base in linguistics and psychology. Charles Fries (1945) of the University of Michigan led the way in applying principles from structural linguistics, it has sometimes been referred to as the ‘Michigan Method.’  Later in its development, principles from behavioral psychology (Skinner 1957) were incorporated. An example class context:  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, so that the learners could overcome the habits of their native language.  It is a beginning-level English class in Mali. There are 34 students, 13–15 years of age.  The students are attentively listening as the teacher is presenting a new dialogue, a conversation between two people. The students know they will be expected eventually to memorize the dialogue the teacher is introducing.  All of the teacher’s instructions are in English. Sometimes she uses actions to convey meaning, but not one word of the students’ native language is uttered.  Then, she acts out the dialogue, and she says: 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. 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.  She has the whole class repeat each of the lines of the dialogue 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 purpose of this drill is to break down the troublesome sentence 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. TEACHER: Repeat after me: post office. CLASS: Post office. TEACHER: To the post office. CLASS: To the post office. TEACHER: Going to the post office. CLASS: Going to the post office. TEACHER: I’m going to the post office. CLASS: I’m going to the post office.  The students adopt the role of Bill while she says Sally’s lines.  In effect, the class is experiencing a repetition drill where the students have 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 says Bill’s lines and the class says Sally’s.  To further practice the lines of this dialogue, 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 dialogue.  The teacher addresses the student nearest her with, ‘Good morning, Adama.’ He, in turn, responds, ‘Good morning, teacher.’ She says, ‘How are you?’ Adama answers, ‘Fine, thanks. And you?’ The teacher replies, ‘Fine.’  He understands through the teacher’s gestures that he is to turn to the student sitting beside him and greet 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.  Finally, the teacher selects two students to perform the entire dialogue for the rest of the class.  A similar procedure is followed for another sentence in the dialogue, ‘How are you?’ The subject pronouns ‘he,’ ‘she,’ ‘they,’ and ‘you’ are used as cue words.  This substitution drill is slightly more difficult for the students since they have to change the form of the verb ‘be’ to ‘is’ or ‘are,’ depending on which subject pronoun the teacher gives them.  The teacher points to a boy in the class and the students understand they are to use the pronoun ‘he’ in the sentence. They chorus, ‘How is he?’ ‘Good!’ says the teacher. She points to a girl and waits for the class’s response, then points to other students to elicit the use of ‘they.’  The teacher leads is a single-slot substitution drill in which the students will repeat a sentence from the dialogue and replace a word or phrase in the sentence with the word or phrase the teacher gives them. This word or phrase is called the cue.  The teacher begins by reciting a line from the dialogue, ‘I 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.’  Now she gives them their first cue phrase, ‘the drugstore.’ Together the students respond, ‘I am going to the drugstore.’ The teacher smiles. ‘Very good!’ she exclaims.  Finally, the teacher increases the complexity of the task by leading the students in a multiple- slot substitution drill.  The teacher in this class starts off by having the students repeat the original sentence from the dialogue, ‘I am going to the post office.’  Then she gives them the cue ‘she.’ The students understand and produce, ‘She is going to the post office.’ The next cue the teacher offers is ‘to the park.’ The students hesitate at first; then they respond by correctly producing, ‘She is going to the park.’  The substitution drills are followed by a transformation drill. This type of drill asks students to change one type of sentence into another—an affirmative sentence into a negative or an active sentence into a passive, for example.  The teacher offers an example, ‘I say, “She is going to the post office.” You make a question by saying, “Is she going to the post office?” OK, let’s begin: “They are going to the bank.” ‘ The class replies in turn, ‘Are they going to the bank?’  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.’  ‘Are you going to the bus station? The teacher asks while holding up a picture of a café. ‘No, I am going to the café,’ the class answers. L E T ’ S T RY T H E D R I L L S O N A N EW D I A L O G UE  The lesson ends for the day. For the rest of the week; 1. Review the dialogue. 2. Expand upon the dialogue by adding a few more lines, such as ‘I am going to the post office. I need a few stamps.’ 3. Drill the new lines and introduce some new vocabulary items through the new lines, for example: I am going to the supermarket. I need a little butter. 4. Work on the difference between mass and count nouns, contrasting ‘a little/a few’ with mass and count nouns respectively.  No grammar rule will ever be given to the students. The students will be led to figure out the rules from their work with the examples the teacher provides. 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 /i/. The students do indeed say the word as if it contained /i:/.  As a result, the teacher works on the contrast between /i/ and /i:/ several times during the week. She uses minimal pair words, such as ship/sheep, live/leave to get her students to hear the difference in pronunciation between the words in each pair. 6. On Friday the teacher leads the class in the ‘supermarket alphabet game.’  The game starts with a student who needs a food item beginning with the letter ‘A.’ The student says, ‘I am going to the supermarket. 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 few bananas,’ or any other food item you could find in the supermarket beginning with the letter ‘B’). 7.A presentation by the teacher on supermarkets in the United States follows the game. The teacher answers the students’ questions about the differences between supermarkets in the United States and open-air markets in Mali. They also discuss briefly the differences between American and Mali football.  Audio-Lingual Method: Principles Observations Principles 1.The teacher introduces a new Language forms do not occur by dialogue. themselves; they occur most naturally within a context. 2 The language teacher uses The native language and the target only the target language in language should be kept apart so the classroom. Actions, that the students’ native language pictures, or realia are used to interferes as little as possible with give meaning otherwise. the students’ attempts to acquire the target language. 3 The language teacher One of the language teacher’s major introduces the dialogue by roles modeling it two times; she is that of a model of the target introduces the drills by language. By listening to how it is modeling the correct answers; supposed to sound, students should at other times, she corrects be mispronunciation. able to mimic the model.  Audio-Lingual Method: Principles Observations Principles 4 The students repeat each Language learning is a process of line of the new dialogue habit several times. formation. The more often something is repeated, the stronger the habit and the greater the learning. 5 The students stumble over It is important to prevent learners one of the lines of the dialogue. from The teacher uses a backward making errors. Errors lead to the build-up drill with this line. formation of bad habits. When errors do occur, they should immediately be corrected by the teacher. 6 The teacher initiates a chain The purpose of language learning is drill in which each student to learn how to use the language greets another. to communicate.  Audio-Lingual Method: Principles Observations Principles 7.The teacher says, ‘Very good,’ Positive reinforcement helps when the students answer the students to develop correct correctly. habits. 8.The teacher uses spoken Students should learn to cues and picture cues. respond to both verbal and nonverbal stimuli. 9 The teacher provides the students The teacher should be like an with cues; she calls on individuals; orchestra leader—conducting, she smiles, uses encouragement; guiding, and controlling the she holds up pictures one after students’ behavior in the target another. language. 10 New vocabulary is introduced The major objective of language through lines of the dialogue; teaching should be for students to vocabulary is limited. acquire the structural patterns; students will learn vocabulary  Audio-Lingual Method: Principles Observations Principles 11. Students are given no The rules necessary to use the grammar rules; grammatical target language will be figured out points are taught through or examples and drills. induced from examples. 12. The teacher does a A comparison between the native and contrastive target language will tell the analysis of the target teacher in which areas her language and the students’ students will probably experience native language in order to difficulty. locate the places where she anticipates her students will have trouble. 13.The teacher writes the Speech is more basic to language dialogue on the blackboard than the written form. The ‘natural toward the end of the week. order’ (the The students do some limited order children follow when learning written work with the dialogue their and the sentence drills. native language) of skill acquisition Audio-Lingual Method: Principles Observations Principles 16. The supermarket alphabet Language cannot be separated from game and a discussion of culture. Culture is not only literature American supermarkets and and football are included. the arts, but also the everyday behavior of the people who use the target language.  Question-Answer Section 1 What are the goals of teachers who use the Audio- Lingual Method?  Teachers want their students to be able to use the target language communicatively.  In order to do this, they believe students need to overlearn the target language, to learn to use it automatically without stopping to think.  Their students achieve this by forming new habits in the target language and overcoming the old habits of their native language. 2 What is the role of the teacher? What is the role of the students?  The teacher is like an orchestra leader, directing and controlling the language behavior of her students. She is also responsible for providing her students with a good model for imitation.  Students are imitators of the teacher’s model or the tapes she supplies of model speakers. 3 What are some characteristics of the teaching/learning process?  New vocabulary and structural patterns are presented through dialogues. The dialogues are learned through imitation and repetition.  Drills (such as repetition, backward build-up, chain, substitution, transformation, and question-and-answer) are conducted based upon the patterns present in the dialogue.  Students’ successful responses are positively reinforced. Grammar is induced from the examples given; explicit grammar rules are not provided.  Cultural information is contextualized in the dialogues 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 dialogues, 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 of the method that relate to this area. 6. 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.  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 pairs. 7. 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 language and the target language will reveal where a teacher should expect the most interference. 8. How is evaluation accomplished? Students might be asked to distinguish between words in a minimal pair, for example, or to supply an appropriate verb form in a sentence. 9.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.