Audio-lingual Method I
Teaching English
The Audio-lingual Method
Milton Orlando Martinez
Teachings Methods, Bachelor Degree VIII
Elmer Jorge Guardado, MaT.
th
October 10 , 2013
Audio-lingual Method II
Teaching English
The English language has become the most spoken language in the world, even, English is the language of business and a lot of people speak it, though, it is not their native language. And it is because nowadays, a lot of enterprises and companies demand a certain level of English to their employees and the people who apply for a job. Most of them have learned the language by using the Audio-lingual Method, because they just know how to speak the language, but they do not know about grammar. Learning by using this method became very popular and it was adopted in every school that teaches English, because they wanted to increase the English level of their students, even, this method is one of the most used in basic level, because it shows the correct pronunciation of the words and corrects the mistakes done at the moment. In this research we are going to study the following questions:
What is the History of the Audio-lingual Method?
What is the Audio-lingual Method and its principal principles?
What are the goals of the Audio-lingual Method?
What techniques are involved in this Method?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Audio-lingual Method?
Through the reading of this topic, we will realize about the uses of this method and how to use it, because it has its techniques and the teacher has to have a very good speaking skill in order to develop the students´ speaking skills. The answers of the questions above are interesting and show exactly what most of English teachers use to do in their classes
Audio-lingual Method III nowadays, and if we realize, this is a traditional method, it is useful, but later on, we are going to see how to use it and who to use it with, because this method is not for all levels.
What is the history of the Audio-lingual Method?
The United States involvement in World War II brought a significant change in the teaching of languages in U.S. schools. It quickly became apparent that the grammartranslation method had not produced people who were able to speak the foreign languages they had studied. The U.S. government asked the universities to develop foreign language programs that produced students who could communicate effectively in those languages. Changes in the beliefs about how people learn impacted the teaching methodologies being developed. Based on the behavioristic psychology, the audio-lingual method was developed.
In the audio-lingual method, the emphasis was on the memorization of a series of dialogues and the rote practice of language structures. The basic premises on which the method was based were that language is speech, not writing, and language is a set of habits. It was believed that much practice of the dialogues would develop oral language proficiency. The use of the native language was avoided.
The method became very popular in the 1960s. Language laboratories began to surge, and students were required to listen to audiotapes and repeat dialogues that captured aspects of daily living. In addition, specific structural patterns of the language studied were embedded in those dialogues. Students were required to participate in a number of practice drills designed to help them memorize the structures and be able to plug other words into the structure. For example, in a substitution drill, the structure might have b een:
Audio-lingual Method IV
I am going to the post office. Students were then required to substitute the word post office for other words, such as supermarket, park, beach, or drugstore.
The belief was that students, through much practice, would form a “habit” and be able to speak the language when needed. Although the intent was to develop fluent and proficient speakers by providing much oral practice of the dialogues and the use of numerous drills to help in this endeavor, the reality was that language proficiency was not the outcome. Years later, students who studied with the audio-lingual method still remembered the dialogues but could not speak the foreign language they had studied. Thus, the method was not successful at accomplishing the main goal. It was too prescriptive; there was no opportunity provided for “true” communication to take place in the ALM classroom. Students had been taught a “script,” and people do not speak following a particular script. (kendallhunt.com, 2010)
What is the Audio-lingual Method and its Principal Principles?
The Audio-lingual Method also called The Oral Method, acts as a supporting for improving the speaking skills, because it helps to pronounce a word in a correct form by using some drills like repetition, transformation, chain and some others that we will study later on in this research. The students repeat a word, phrase or sentence after the teacher, but, why after the teacher? It is because we need to know how a word is pronounced in order to reproduce it in a correct way, otherwise, we would be guessing a pronunciation, and we could make a mistake. That is the importance of having a model in this method. This method has a “Skinnerian” characteristic which is the use of the stimulus-responsestimulus-responsereinforcement. When the teacher gives an example and explains to the students how to pronounce a word or a phrase and motivates them to repeat it, it is considered as a stimulus, the response is the reproduction of what the teacher wants to the students repeat, but if the teacher listens to a student who makes a mispronunciation mistake, the teacher can explain
Audio-lingual Method V and repeat again in order to give a reinforcement about the correct pronunciation. This process is known as “The 3P” method of teaching (presentation-practice-production). (presentation-practice-production). In this method, it is very important for teachers to have a good pronunciation skill, because they are modeling the pronunciation of their students, and if the teacher has mispronunciation mistakes, the students will make them too. (barrel.ih.otaru-uc.ac.jp, 2013 ) As we all know, this method is based in principles to teach, and we have a lot of principles involved here, but we know that th at there are some of them that are more used and are the more protruding, and we are going to review some of them: “The native language language and the target language have separate linguistic systems. They should be kept apart so that the students´ native language interferes as little as possible with the students´ attempts to acquire the target language.” “One of the language teacher´s major r oles oles is that of model of the target language. Teachers should provide students with a good model. By listening how it supposed to sound, students should be able to mimic the model.” model.” “Language learning is a process of habit formation. The more often something is repeated, the stronger the habit and the greater the learning.” “The purpose of language learning is to learn how to use the language to communicate.” “Positive reinforcement helps the students to develop co rrect habits.” “The teacher should be be like an orchestra leader; conducting, guiding and controlling the students´ behavior in the target language.” “The major challenge of foreign language teaching is getting students to overcome the habits of their native language. A comparison between the native and the target language will tell the teacher in what areas the students will probably experience difficult.” difficult.” (Larsen-Freeman, Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching, 2000)
Audio-lingual Method VI
What are the goals of the Audio-lingual Method?
Just as with the Direct Method that preceded it, the overall goal of the Audio-lingual Method was to create communicative competence in learners. However, it was thought that the most effective way to do this was for students to "overlearn" the language being studied through extensive repetition and a variety of elaborate drills. The idea was to project the linguistic patterns of the language into the minds of the learners in a way that made responses automatic and "habitual". To this end it was held that the language "habits" of the first language would constantly interfere, and the only way to overcome this problem was to facilitate the learning of a new set of "habits" appropriate linguistically to the language being studied. (KEPPLERLM, 2010)
But, according to (gobookee.org) we can summarize it in four main goals:
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Using target language communicatively.
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Overlearn language so as to use it automatically without stopping to think.
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Learn the language by habit formation and language habits.
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Overcome old habits of native language.
What techniques are involved in this Method?
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Dialogue Memorization: In this drill, the students have to memorize a short conversation or dialogue or dialogue between two people (“A” and “B”), the students perform role “A” and the teacher performs role “B”, and then they change roles in order to perform both of them. Also, the teacher can divide the class into two groups and give to one group role “A” and the other group would be role “B”, and after finishing the conversation, both groups can change roles and perform the two roles of the conversation.
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Backward build-up (expansion): This drill is used used when a long line of dialogue is giving students troubles. The teacher breaks down the line into several parts. The students repeat a part of the sentence, and if the students have done it good, the
Audio-lingual Method VII
teacher will add another word or two words of the line for being repeated, but if they made a mispronunciation mistake the teacher will repeat the word or words in order to give the model to follow. And that process is repeated until the long line of dialogue is pronounced in a correct way.
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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 dialogue.
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Chain drill: A chain drill gets its name from the chain of conversation made by the students in the classroom. The teacher starts the chain, he/she asks something to any student or simply a greeting, and the student has to answer the teacher, then, the student has to turn and ask to the student next to him/her. And the chain continues. Even though, this is a limited and short conversation, it allows to the teacher to check the speech of every ev ery single student in the class.
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Single-Slot Substitution drill: The teacher says a line, usually from the dialogue. Then, the teacher says a word or a phrase (called “cue”). The students have to repeat the part of the dialogue by using the word or phrase that the teacher has given them in order to they recognize where the word or phrase fits in the part of the dialogue. And at the end, when the students have found where the cue fits in, the phrase is repeated.
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Multiple-Slot substitution drill: This one is different than the single-slot substitution, because in this one, the teacher gives two or three words that fit in different parts of the dialogue line. And the students have to recognize which part of speech fits into the sentence and where to put them.
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Use of the Minimal Pairs: The teacher works with pairs of words that differ just in one sound; for example, “leave/live”, the students are asked to recognize the difference between both sounds and then they are able to repeat them.
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Transformation drill: Students are asked to change a sentence, for example, from an affirmative to a negative sentence, or a question. qu estion. (Larsen-Freeman, 2000)
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Audio-lingual Method? Advantages: Comparing this method with the Grammar Translation Method, which
its main purpose is to read and write and that can be so stressful for students, and when are taught with GTM, they practice just a little their listening and speaking. But, those skills are the main point to develop in this Method. Learners through the ALM are able to participate in situational context competently. In addition, learners are more aware about the phonologic aspects of the language. When the students have a model to imitate, in this case, the teacher, the students use to pay more attention to proper pronunciation and intonation. Mispronunciation mistakes are corrected immediately by using positive reinforced. Here, the students are more sensible to the changes in the intonation of a sentence, question, request, etc. Through substitution drills, learners also learn to recognize the borders between the phrases that make up the sentence. They are also exposes to a different sentence structure by using repetition drills as well. Transformational drill helps students to familiarize with question forms, like tag questions and their answers, affirmative and negative sentences, and even some difficult structures for some students as passive and active voice. All that variety of sentence structure helps to improve the communicative competences of the students. (Li, 2009)
Audio-lingual Method IX Disadvantages: This method has more disadvantages than advantages, because,
though Audio-lingual Method marked the start of the technological age in language teaching, and it introduced important new elements for visual presentation and possibility of eliciting language from visual cues. The main disadvantages are: -
The basic method of teaching is repetition, speech is standardized and students turn into parrots that can produce many things but never create anything new. The students become better and better at pattern practice, but are unable to use the patterns fluently in a spontaneous and natural way.
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Teachers got the tendency to use the audio-visual materials as a method by their own, instead of using them as a teaching aid.
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More subtle classroom skills were needed for students to assimilate material and use it creatively.
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Technology was needed sometimes in order to set the example of a dialogue or a conversation, because teacher do not want to model them anymore, and by using these type of technology, the teacher needs to be careful because she/he has to take care of the tools that is using, cd´s and tape recorder because they can get break, or the use of a data show for setting some images in order to give ideas for making or repeating sentences.
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All that equipment has a cost, and some schools cannot afford them, and teachers sometimes avoid giving the example of some pronunciations because they are becoming lazy. (confesp.fl.kpi.ua)
Audio-lingual Method X As we can see, the Audio-lingual Method is a method that was created for the U.S.A. Army, in order to prepare their soldiers to communicate effectively in the countries that they were sent, but, that could be applied in schools in order to improve the student´s speaking skills. This method has good results, if we mix it with another method, like the Grammar Translation Method in order to have a better teaching-learning process, because the Audio-lingual Method is useful by its own, but not complete, because grammar is not in it and as we know, grammar is important impo rtant when we are learning another language. langua ge. The Audio-lingual Method has become in one of the most used and useful methods to teach another language, and it is because, as we have seen, one of the goals of this Method is to practice the language, and that is what language students need, to practice the language. The tools used in this method are very helpful too, because the cues and visual aids that teachers show help to students to understand the exercises and drills, also, depending on how teachers use those tools, the class will be more interactive and less boring.
Bibliography kendallhunt.com. (2010, July 29). Retrieved October 6, 2013 , from kendallhunt.com:
http://www.kendallhunt.com/uploadedFiles/Kendall_Hunt/Content/Higher_Education/Up loads/CH11_Zainuddin_3e.pdf slidehare.net . (2012, May 6). Retrieved October 13, 2013, from slideshare.net:
http://www.slideshare.net/mahdiehosseini/coparison-of-three-teaching-methods barrel.ih.otaru-uc.ac.jp. (2013, August 10). Retrieved September 29, 2013, from barrel.ih.otaru-
uc.ac.jp: http://barrel.ih.otaruuc.ac.jp/bitstream/10252/4828/6/Teacher's%20class%2005-18,25-12.pdf confesp.fl.kpi.ua. (n.d.). Retrieved October 8, 2013, from confesp.fl.kpi.ua:
http://confesp.fl.kpi.ua/en/node/1060 gobookee.org. (n.d.). Retrieved October 8, 2013, from gobookee.org:
http://www.gobookee.org/get_book.php?u=aHR0cDovL3d3dy51cnVndWF5ZWR1Y2EuZW R1LnV5L1VzZXJmaWxlcy9QMDAwMSU1Q0ZpbGUlNUNBVURJTyUyMExJTkdVQUwlMjBNR VRIT0QucGRmCkRldmVsb3BlZCBhcyBhIHJlYWN0aW9uIHRvIHRoZSBncmFtbWFyIE1JTElUQ VJZIFBVUlBPU0VTOiBUaGU= KEPPLERLM. (2010, January 10). esl-methods.wikispaces.com. Retrieved September 26, 2013, from esl-methods.wikispaces.com: http://eslmethods.wikispaces.com/file/view/The+Audiolingual+Method.pdf Larsen-Freeman, D. (2000). Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. In D. Larse n-Freeman, Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching (pp. 48-49). Oxford Univ Pr.
Li, L. K. (2009). es.scribd.com. Retrieved October 6, 2013, from es.scribd.com: http://es.scribd.com/doc/113481989/Audio-Lingual-Method-Assignment
UNIVERSIDAD CAPITAN GENERAL GERARDO BARRIOS. Km. 113 Carretera del Litoral, Desvío a Santa María Usulután, El Salvador. PBX. (503) 2662-0846 LESSON PLAN Martinez Date: Oct. 17 th, 2013 Time: 15 min. Teacher’s name: Milton Orlando Martinez Subject: English Section: A Unit: 3 Career: Bachelor Degree in English. Level: A 2
Teaching Methods Topics:
Activities Principles of the Method
The purpose of the language learning is to learn how to use the language to communicate.
Places
The Audiolingual Method.
Teachers should provide students with a good model. By listening to how it is supposed to sound, students should be able to mimic the model.
Each language has a finite number of patterns. Pattern practice helps students to form habits that enable the students to use the patterns.
Techniques
Teacher
Students
Teaching Resources Timing
Greeting.
Chain Drill
Markers.
Give Interact and indications. practice with with each other
Eraser. 5 min. Data show.
Repetition
Minimal Pairs
Play a video with a tongue twisted in order to show the pronunciati on.
Explain the difference pronunciati on between two similar words.
Repeat the tongue twisted as fast as possible.
5 min.
Computer.
Whiteboard.
Pronounce two similar words and recognize their difference.
Visual aids. 5 min.
