The Audio-Lingual Method

Dr. Chifen Chen

Introduction
Founded

around 1950s and 1960s, AL was based on structural linguistic an behavioral psychology : 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
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 persons 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. allows some controlled communication among students and give the teacher an opportunity to check students speech.

It

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 teachers question quickly.