In the Audio-Lingual Method focus is on sentence and sound patterns. The students have to overcome their native language habits in order to form the new target language habits. This is done through oral/aural drills and pattern practice.

Historical approach:

The history of ALM can be divided into three periods: before, during and after World War II.

Before: The ALM is an American theory and in America at the time there were little needs for foreign language teaching. The methods at the time were reading based. There was little attempt to treat language systematically or scientifically.

During: America had to communicate with a lot of countries therefore they needed interpreters, code-room assistants, and translators. This rose the need for linguists to develop a fast and efficient language teaching technique, at the time called the army method:

-        A native speaker “the informant” served phrases, vocabulary and sentences for imitation.

-        A linguist, who supervised the learning experience (not necessarily familiar with the target language), was eliciting the basis structures.

-        Students studied ten hours a day six days a week. Two to six-week sessions.

After: The good results convinced linguists of the value of intensive, oral based approach. Several universities and linguists (Charles Fries) continued to develop this approach which ended up being the ALM. ALM reached its period of most widespread use in the 1960s where it was attacked as being unsound both in terms of language theory and learning theory. Chomsky (1966): “Language is not a habit structure…..”

Basic theories behind ALM

William Moulton 1961, at the 9^th int. Congress of Linguists:  ”Language is speech not writing…..language is a set of habits….teach the language not about the language….. ”

The natural order of language learning is:  Listen – Speak – Read – Write

ALM is closely linked to the psychologically idea of behaviourism: a response triggered by a stimulus; and reinforcement, which serves to mark the response as being appropriate (or inappropriate) and encourages the repetition (or suppression) of the response in the future.

Reinforcement (behaviour likely to

Occur again and become a habit)

Learner roles

• Learners are viewed as organisms that can be directed by skilled training techniques to produce correct responses. (Behaviourist learning theory)
• Learners play a reactive role by responding to stimuli, and therefore they have little control over the content, pace, or style of learning.
• Learners are not encouraged to initiate interaction, because this may lead to mistakes.

Teacher roles:

• The Audio-Lingual Method is a teacher-dominated method, where the teacher’s role is central and active.
• The teacher models the target language, controls the direction and pace of learning, and monitors and corrects the learners’ performance.
• Language learning is seen to result from active verbal interaction between the teacher and the learners.

Discussion of main principles:

• “Language learning is a process of habit formation. The more often something is repeated, the stronger the habit and the greater the learning.”
• “It is important to prevent learners from making errors. Errors lead to the formation of bad habits. When errors do occur, they should be immediately corrected by the teacher.”
• “The native 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’ attempt to acquire the target language.”
• “Speech is more basic to language than the written form.”
• “Students should ‘overlearn’ i.e. learn to answer automatically without stopping to think.”