The Audio-Lingual Method

 Hello everyone, I'm here today with a different method. Here is the king/queen of the drills: the Audio Lingual method! It has some different names like The Oral method, The Army Method, and The New Method. This method was widely used first in the USA and then in other countries in the 1950s and 1960s. When it first came out, its purpose was to teach the soldiers the language quickly. 

This method is an oral-based approach. It is based on '' Structural Linguistics'' and ''Behavioristic Learning Theory''. In this context, it would not be wrong to say that it is the first method that bases its foundations on scientific theories. It takes into consideration what language is and how language is learned. According to the Structural Linguist Language Theory, language consists of related structural elements like grammatical units, lexical items, and phonological units which all of them are responsible to convey meaning. Therefore, it argues that learning a new language is possible by mastering these elements that make up the target language. When we come to its behavioristic learning basic, it sees language learning as a habit formation and defends that mistakes should be corrected immediately by evaluating mistakes as bad habits. It claims that learning is a conditioning, which is to help the student respond correctly to the stimulus by shaping and reinforcing.

The advice given to teachers is actually this: The more the student repeats, the more the student automatically acquires the structures in the target language, thus forming a strong habit and strong learning. Thanks to these repetitions, the students overlearn and they automatically answer every question without wasting time. Thus, it is tried to prevent students from applying their old habits in their native language to the new language they have learned. 

It evaluates the native language of the student and the target language learned as two different systems and argues that these two systems should be kept separate from each other for a successful language learning and teaching. For this reason, the language spoken in the classroom is the target language learned. The meaning is expected to be given by different aids such as actions, pictures, and relia. The teacher uses spoken or picture cues and students should learn how they answer verbal or nonverbal the stimuli given. The teacher is expected to do a contrastive analysis between the student's native language and the target language he or she is learning, thereby identifying where the student might experience difficulties while learning the target language. In addition, another important task of the teacher is to be a good model of the target language for students, especially in terms of pronunciation. Students are expected to mimic the model correctly. The teacher should minimize the occurrence of bad habits by preventing the student from making mistakes. The teacher is supposed to lead the classroom like an orchestra leader, the teacher is the person who directs, guides, and controls the students' behavior in the classroom. In addition, another task of the teacher in this method, which sees language as an integral part of the culture, is to convey the culture of the target language to the students.

The purpose of learning a language is to use the language for communication. It argues that language forms do not come into being spontaneously, but that these forms occur naturally within a context. Acquiring the structural patterns of the target language is the major objective. So, grammar has been kept superior to vocabulary. Many different drill types are used for grammar teaching. Grammar rules are not given explicitly; students learn grammatical points via examples and drills. Students are not expected to memorize rules, the learning of a foreign language should be the same as the acquisition of our native language. The grammar structure should be deduced from examples by the students.  It also lists the learning of language skills as happened the sequence in the native language; advocates teaching listening first, then speaking, then reading, and finally writing. Pronunciation is taught from the beginning. In the photo on the side, you can see a language lab where students study pronunciation and grammatical structures. I said that this method was originally created to teach languages ​​to soldiers. When positive results were obtained on the soldiers, the method was developed and adapted to language teaching. The word ''language lab'' should always remind us of this method.

There are no principles about how to deal with students' emotions. The interaction way is generally from teacher to student, but student-student interaction is also possible with the chain drills and playing roles in dialogues even if they are teacher-directed.

Now let's talk about the techniques used in the Audio-Lingual Method.

1) Dialog Memorization

The repetition of dialogues about everyday situations is at the heart of this method. Dialogues are also used to teach culture. Cultural information is contextualized in the dialogues. Dialogues are usually daily conversations between two people. Students memorize dialogues through mimicry, take on the roles of the people in the dialogue, and demonstrate the dialogue. First, the dialogues are studied verbally and then reading and writing activities are done, all of these activities are related to the dialogue studied. Dialogues contain new and useful words and grammatical structures to learn. The lines in the dialogue are used for grammar that will be taught later. The drills are made with the lines of the dialogue.

2) Backward Build-Up (expansion) Drill

This drill is used when students have trouble saying a long line of dialogue. The teacher divides the sentence into several parts and repeats the sentence, usually starting at the end of the sentence, where new information is formed, and until the student has correctly repeated the whole sentence.

3) Repetition Drill

Students are asked to repeat what the teacher said as quickly and accurately as possible by modeling the teacher. It is also used to teach the dialog to the students.

4) Chain Drill

This drill provides controlled communication activities are performed. The teacher asks a question, which is usually a question related to the learned dialogue or grammatical structure. The student answers and asks the same question to the next friend. The second student asks the same question to the third student and the chain continues until the last student. With this drill, the teacher checks the students' pronunciation and can make corrections.

5) Single- Slot Substitution Drill

The teacher gives a cue to the student. What is called cue is the word or phrase the teacher says. The student makes changes in a single point of the sentence, taking into account the cue given. For example, she/he changes only the verb, only the subject, or only the object.

6) Multiple- Slot Substitution Drill

The teacher can ask the student to change both the subject and object of the given sentence. Students should pay attention to subject-verb agreement and which element of the sentence will change.

7) Transformation Drill

In this drill, the teacher may ask the students to convert an affirmative sentence to a question sentence, a question sentence to a negative sentence, and a negative sentence to an affirmative sentence.

8) Question and Answer Drill

The goal of this drill is to have students answer the teacher's questions as quickly and accurately as possible and then practice the question pattern of the learned grammatical structure.

9) Use of Minimal Pairs

I mentioned earlier that teachers compare the target language with the native languages of the students. As a result of these comparisons, teachers also identify sounds that make it difficult for students to pronounce. In addition to these sounds, teachers also teach their students the word pairs that have a single sound difference at the same point in the pronunciation of the target language.

10) Complete the Dialog

Some words are deleted from the previously studied dialogue and students are expected to fill in these blanks with the missing words.

11) Grammar Games (like Supermarket Alphabet Games)

These games allow students to express themselves in a limited way and allow students to practice learned grammatical structures within a context. They provide students with lots of repetition opportunities.

Now let's briefly summarize what we have learned.

* Students' errors should be avoided to prevent bad habits. Students should be corrected immediately!

* Classroom language is L2.

* Language learning is a habit formation.

* Stimulus- Response- Reinforcement

* Grammar + Pronunciation > Vocabulary

* Inductive Grammar Teaching

* There is a natural order of acquiring the language skills : 

1) Listening   2) Speaking   3) Reading   4) Writing

* Teachers are an orchestra leader and they should provide a good model for students.

* Spoken cues and picture cues are important for drills.

* Structural Linguistic Language Theory + Behavioristic Learning Theory= The Audio Lingual Method

* The native language and the target language are two different and separate linguistic systems.

* Repeat until you vomit! Repeat until you answer automatically!

* Overlearn to give the correct answer quickly and accurately when I ask a question!

* Everyday speech, oral-based approach. 

* Dialogues has a vital role in teaching a foreign language.

* DRILLS ARE THE KEY TECHNIQUES USED. (Backward Build-Up (expansion) Drill, Question and Answer Drill, Transformation Drill, Multiple- Slot Substitution Drill, Single- Slot Substitution Drill, Chain Drill, Repetition Drill.)

It was really tiring for me to prepare this post, I hope you find useful information in this post. Take care of yourself!