Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

particular age; adults may do it as happily as children.
Its views of L2 learning are closest to the processing models described in
Chapter 12: language is doing things, not knowing things. Partly this comes
across in its emphasis on the physical situation: the dialogues illustrate language
used in situations such as the travel agent’s or the chemist’s shop. Most impor-
tance is attached to building up the strength of the students’ response through
practice. Little weight is given to the understanding of linguistic structure or to
the creation of knowledge. The ability to use language is built up piece by piece
using the same type of learning all the time. Grammar is seen as ‘structures’ like
‘Could I have some X?’ or ‘This is a Y’, within which items of vocabulary are sub-
stituted. Courses and syllabuses are graded around structures; drills practise partic-
ular structures; dialogues introduce and exemplify structures and vocabulary in
context. The style requires a classroom which is teacher-controlled, except for the
final exploitation phase when, as Lado (1964) puts it, the student ‘has the patterns
ready as habits but he must practise using them with full attention on purposeful
communication’. Until the exploitation phase of the cycle, students repeat, answer
or drill at the teacher’s behest. Though they work individually in the language lab-
oratory, all of them still use the same activities and teaching materials. The style
demands students who do not expect to take the initiative. All responsibility is in
the teacher’s hands. The different aspects of the audio-lingual method can be seen
in the list made by Wilga Rivers (1964).
The audio-lingual style 245
Box 13.3 Assumptions of audio-lingual language teaching
(Rivers, 1964)
●
Assumption 1. Foreign Language Learning is basically a mechanical process
of habit formation.
●
Assumption 2. Language skills are learned more effectively if items of the
foreign language are presented in spoken form before written form.
●
Assumption 3. Analogy provides a better foundation for foreign language
learning than analysis.
●
Assumption 4. The meanings which the words of the language have for the
native speaker can be learned only in a matrix of allusions to the culture of
the people who speak that language.
In Europe, audio-lingualism happened to arrive from the USA at a time when the
language laboratory became technically feasible. Many of its techniques indeed
worked well with this equipment; repeating sentences and hearing recordings of
your repetition, doing drills and hearing the right answer after your attempt, fitted
in nicely with the tape recorder and later the language laboratory. Recent styles
that emphasise free production of speech and interactive communication have
found language laboratories far harder to assimilate, apart from for listening activ-
ities. Indeed, any glance at materials for computer-assisted language learning
(CALL) on the Web show that they are largely audio-lingual in their emphasis on
drill and practice, though they necessarily depend more on the written language
because of the computer’s limitations in dealing with speech.

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One virtue of the academic style is that if it does not achieve its secondary goal of
allowing the student to communicate, it might still have educational value via its
goals of improving thinking, promoting cross-cultural understanding, and so on.
The audio-lingual style has no fallback position. If it does not succeed in getting the
student to function in the second language, there is nothing else to be gained from
it – no academic knowledge or problem-solving ability. Lado does claim, however,
that it teaches a positive attitude of identification with the target culture. Its insis-
tence on L2 learning as the creation of habits is an oversimplification of the behav-
iourist models of learning that were scorned as explanations for language
acquisition for many years. Many would deny that the unique elements of language
are in fact learnable by these means; the ability to create or understand ‘new’ sen-
tences is not acquired by practising ‘old’ sentences. The principles of Universal
Grammar, for example, are impossible to acquire through drills and dialogues.
Syllabuses and textbooks in the audio-lingual style mostly see structures,
phonemes and vocabulary items as the sum total of language. Though based on the
four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, the style pays surprisingly lit-
tle attention to the distinctive features of each skill. The skill of listening, for exam-
ple, is not usually broken up into levels or stages that resemble those seen in
Chapter 7. Moreover, the communication situation is far more complex than the
style implies. If communication is the goal of language teaching, the content of
teaching needs to be based on an analysis of communication itself, which is not
adequately covered by structures and vocabulary. Even if students totally master
the content of an audio-lingual course, they still need much more to function in a
real-life situation.
Yet many teachers fall back on the audio-lingual style. One reason may be that
it provides a clear framework for teachers to work within. Few other styles could
be captured in four assumptions, as Wilga Rivers manages to do. Teachers always
know what they are supposed to be doing, unlike more flexible or improvisational
styles. Students can relax within a firmly structured environment, always know-
ing the kinds of activities that will take place and what will be expected of them.
After teaching a group of beginners audio-lingually for six weeks, I decided it was
time to have a change by introducing some communicative exercises; the stu-
dents requested to go back to the audio-lingual techniques.
Certain aspects of language may lend themselves best to audio-lingual teaching.
Pronunciation teaching has hardly changed its audio-lingual style teaching tech-
niques such as repetition and drill, or its academic style conscious explanation in
the past 40 years, unlike the rapid change in other areas of teaching, perhaps
because of lack of imagination by teachers, perhaps because the audio-lingual
style is indeed the most effective in this area. Lado’s (1964) pronunciation tech-
niques of ‘demonstration, imitation, props, contrast, and practice’ seem as compre-
hensive as anything presented in Chapter 4. The style reminds us that language is
in part physical behaviour, and the total language teaching operation must take
this into account.
Though ostensibly out of fashion, the influence of audio-lingualism is still per-
vasive. Few teachers nowadays employ a ‘pure’ audio-lingual style; yet many of
the ingredients are present in today’s classrooms. The use of short dialogues, the
emphasis on spoken language, the value attached to practice, the emphasis on the
students speaking, the division into four skills, the importance of vocabulary con-
trol, the step-by-step progression, all go back to audio-lingualism. Many teachers
feel comfortable with the audio-lingual style and use it at one time or another in
their teaching.
Second language learning and language teaching styles