Dr.

Yahia Farès University of Médéa Third Year Students

Faculty of Letters&Languages Didactics

Course Instructor: Dr. Ouafa Ouarniki E-mail: ouafa.ouarniki@yahoo.com

The Audio-Lingual Method

The Audio-Lingual Method, which belongs to the cognitive approach of language teaching,
was developed in the United States during WW II. There was a great demand for people
speaking foreign languages for military purposes. They had to be prepared for their tasks in
shortcut intensive courses. Some of the principles used in this method are similar to those of
the direct method but many are different, based upon the conceptions of the Grammar
Translation Method.

The goal of Audio-Lingual Method is to enable students to use the target language
communicatively. In order to do this, students need to over-learn the target language, to learn
to use it automatically without stopping to think. This aim can be achieved by students’ forming
new habits in the target language and overcoming the old habits of their native language.

The principles of the method are:

- the teacher is like an orchestra leader, directing and controlling the language behaviour of
her/his students; she provides her students with a good model for imitation;
- the target language is used in the classroom not the students’ native
language;
- a contrastive analyses between the students’ native language and the target language will
reveal where a teacher should expect the most interference;
- there is student-student interaction in chain drills or when students take different roles in
dialogues, but this interaction is teacher-directed because most of the interaction is between
teacher-student and is initiated by the teacher;
- new vocabulary and structures are presented through dialogues, the dialogues are learnt
through imitation and repetition, grammar is induced from the examples given: explicit
grammar rules are not provided;
- cultural information is contextualized in the dialogues or presented by the
teacher;
- the oral/aural skills receive most of the attention, pronunciation is taught from the beginning,
often by students working in language laboratories;
- students are evaluated on the bases of distinguishing between words in a minimal pair or by
supplying an appropriate word form in a sentence;
- student errors are to be avoided through the teacher’s awareness of where the students will
have difficulty;
- the syllabus is structure-based.

Activities characteristic of the method:

- dialogue memorization
- expansion-drill (This drill is used when a long dialogue is giving students trouble. The
teacher brakes down the line into several parts. Following the teacher’s cue, the students
expand what they are repeating part by part until they
are able to repeat the entire line. The teacher begins with the part at the end of the sentence
and works backward from there to keep the intonation of the line as natural as possible. This
directs more student attention to the end of the sentence, where new information typically
occurs.)
- repetition drill

- chain drill (The teacher begins the chain of conversation by greeting a student or asking him
a question. That student responds, then turns to the student sitting next to him and the chain
will be continued. The chain drill allows some controlled communication, even though it is
limited.)
- single-slot substitution drill (The teacher says a line, usually from the dialogue. Next, the
teacher says a word or a phrase- called a cue. The students repeat the line the teacher has
given them substituting the cue into the line in its proper place. The major purpose of this drill
is to give the students practice in finding and filling in the slots of a sentence.)
- multiple-slot substitution drill (The teacher gives cue phrases, one at a time that fit into
different slots in the dialogue line. The students have to recognise what part of speech each
cue is where it fits into the sentence and make other changes
such as subject-verb agreement.)
- transformation drill (Students are asked fro example to transform an
affirmative sentence into a negative one.)
- question and answer drill
- use of minimal pairs (The teacher works with pairs of words which differ in
only one sound eg. ship – sheep.)
- gap-filling
- grammar game. (Larsen-Freeman 1986: 31-50)

The Silent Way

According to cognitive psychologists and transformational generative linguists language
learning does not take place through mimicry since people can create utterances they have never
heard before. That is the reason why language must not be considered a product of habit
formation, but rather a rule formation. Language acquisition must be a procedure where people
use their own thinking processes, or cognition to discover the rules of the language they are
acquiring. The emphasis on human cognition led to the name “cognitive code” being applied to
a new general approach to language teaching. Caleb Gattegno’s Silent Way did not emerge
from the cognitive code approach it shares certain principles with it. In the Silent Way teaching
should be subordinated to learning.

The goal of the method is to enable students to use the language for selfexpression to express
their thoughts, perceptions and feelings. In order to do this they need to develop independence
from the teacher, to develop their own inner criteria for correctness.

The principles of the Silent Way:

- the teacher is a technician or engineer, only the learner can do the learning but the teacher
can focus the students’ perceptions, force their awareness;
- for much of the students-teacher interaction the teacher is silent; he is still very active setting
up situations to force awareness; when the teacher speaks it is to give clues not to model the
language; student-student verbal interaction is desirable and is encouraged;
- the students’ native language can be used to give instructions when necessary to help a
student improve his/her pronunciation; the native language is also used during the feed-back
sessions;
- vocabulary is restricted at first;
- there is a focus on the structures of the language, although explicit grammar rules may never
be supplied;
- pronunciation is worked on from the beginning, it is important that students acquire the
melody of the language;
- all four skills are worked on from the beginning of the course, although there is a sequence
in that students learn to read or write what they have already produced orally; the skills
reinforce what students are learning;
- the culture as reflected in people’s own unique world view is inseparable from their
language;
- the teacher never gives a formal test, he assesses student learning all the time; the teacher
must be responsive to immediate learning needs; the teacher does not praise or criticize
student behaviour since this would interfere with students developing their own inner criteria;
the teacher looks for steady progress, not perfection;
- students’ errors are seen as a natural, indispensable part of the learning process, errors are
inevitable since the students are encouraged to explore the language; the teacher uses student
errors as a basis for deciding where further work is necessary;
- there is no fixed linear, structural syllabus, instead the teacher starts with what the students
know and builds from one structure to the next; the previously introduced structures are
continually being recycled.

Activities characteristic of the method:

- sound-colour chart (The chart contains blocks of colour, each one representing a sound in
the target language. The chart allows students to produce sound combinations in the target
language without doing so through repetition.)
- teacher’s silence (The teacher gives just as much help as is necessary and then is silent. Even
in error correction the teacher will only supply a verbal answer as a last resort.)
- peer correction
- rods (Rods can be used to provide visible actions or situations for any language structure to
introduce it, or to enable students to practice using it.)
- self correction gestures (The teacher indicates for example that each of his fingers represents
a word in a sentence and uses this to locate the trouble spot for the student.)
- word chart
- Fidel charts (The teacher points to the colour coded Fidel charts in order that students can
associate the sounds of the language with their spelling.)

structured feed-back (The teacher accepts the students’ comments in a non-defensive manner
hearing things that will help give him direction for where he should work when the class
meets again.) (Larsen-Freeman 1986: 51-72)