Information collection & exchange

igure 7.5 From English for Today, Book 1, edited by William R. Slager. McGraw-Hill Book Company, 
nit I. DESCRIBING THINGS AND PEOPLE
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likely either to have studied English (or another language) via the Grammar Translation Method, or at least 
to know about the approach. Many will come to class or to your sessions firmly believing that they will not 
learn English unless you give them rules and require them to translate from one language to the other. 
 Direct metho
Description 
The essence of both the Direct Method and the Audiolingual Method is that the best way to learn a language 
is through habit formation. Students are exposed to model sentences which they practice in a variety of
d
sentence as a habit, after which they presumably can use the sentence type to express their own thoughts. 
In the Audiolingual Method, oral language (including careful work on pronunciation) is stressed; written 
practice is considered secondary. In fact, in some Audiolingual curricula, written work is postponed entirely 
until the student has reached an intermediate level. While grammar is never dealt with overtly in the 
classroom, the sequence of presentation of sentence types and vocabulary is rigidly controlle
s
not used. The te
Example 
Figures 7.5-7.7 are from English for Today, an ESL textbook written within the Audiolingual framework. In 
the sample pages, the sentence pattern "Th
y
• presentati
Note that the meaning of the sentences is conveyed entirely by pictures. The presentation and drill result, it 
is hoped, in the student's ability to use the pattern "This is a ______ " to express his own ideas. 
C
It is hard to find a student 
th
counter to those principles. In any event, students who have studied English through this approach 
apparently find it hard to extend what they have learned into natural language situations. While they can do 
the drills well, they cannot use the language on their own without considerable additional work.