The Audio-Lingual

Method
Dr. Chifen Chen

Introduction
Founded

around 1950s and 1960s, AL

was based on
an
: 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.

It

allows some controlled communication

among students and give the teacher an
opportunity to check students speech.

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.