Oral Approach and Audio-Lingual Method
Oral Approach
Oral Approach is an approach to language teaching developed by British applied linguists from the 1930s to the 1960s. It is also called Situational Language Teaching, which refers to a grammar-based method to language teaching in which principles of grammatical and lexical gradation are used and new teaching points are presented and practiced through meaningful situation-based activities.
The origin of this approach began with the work of British applied linguists in the 1920s and 1930s. There are two of the most prominent figures in British twentieth-century language teaching. Harold Palmer and A. S. Hornby who were familiar but unsatisfied with the Direct Method, attempted to develop a more scientific foundation for an oral approach to teaching English than as evidenced in the Direct Method. One of the first aspects of method design to receive attention as the role of vocabulary. The reasons are: First, language teaching specialists, like Palmer, held the view that vocabulary was one of the most important aspects of foreign language learning. Second, there was an increased emphasis on reading skills as the goal of foreign language study in some countries. Vocabulary was seen as an essential component of reading proficiency.
This led to the development of principles of vocabulary control, which were to have a major practical impact on the teaching of English in the following decades. Frequency counts showed that a core of 2,000 or so words occurred frequently in written texts and that knowledge of these words would greatly assist in reading a foreign language.
Parallel to the interest in developing rational principles for vocabulary selection was a focus on the grammatical content of a language course. Palmer had emphasized the problems of grammar for the foreign learner. But his view of grammar was based on the assumption that one universal logic formed the basis of all languages and that the teacher’s responsibility was to show each category of the universal grammar was to be expressed in the foreign language. Palmer, together with Hornby and other British applied linguists, analyzed English and classified its major grammatical structures into sentence patterns, which could be used to help internalize the rules of English sentence structures.
The main characteristics of the approach were as follows:
1. Language teaching begins with the spoken language. Materials are taught orally before it is presented in written form;
2. The target language is the language of the classroom;
3. New language points are introduced and practiced situationally;
4. Vocabulary selection procedures are followed to ensure that an essential general service vocabulary is covered;
5. Items of grammar are graded following the principle that simple forms should be taught before complex ones;
6. Reading and writing are introduced once a sufficient lexical and grammatical basis is established.
The theory of language underlying Situational Language Teaching can be characterized as a type of British “structuralism”. Speech was regarded as the basis of language, and structure was viewed as being at the heart of speaking ability. The British theoreticians had a different focus on their version of structuralism—the notion of situation. “Our principal classroom activity in the teaching of English structure will be the oral practice of structures. This oral practice of controlled sentence patterns should be given in situation designed and to give the greatest amount of practice in English speech to the pupil” (Pittman, 1963: 179). Many British linguists had emphasized the close relationship between the structure of language and the context and situations in which language is used.
The theory of learning underlying Situational Language Teaching is a type of behaviorist habit-formation theory. It addresses primarily the processes rather than the conditions of learning.
Like the Direct Method, Situational Language Teaching adopts an inductive approach to the teaching of grammar. The meaning of words or structures is not to be given through explanation in either the native tongue or the target language but is to be induced from the way the form is used in a situation. Explanation is discouraged, and the learner is expected to deduce the meaning of a particular structure or vocabulary item from the situation in which it is presented. Extending structures and vocabulary to new situations takes place by generalization. The learner is expected to apply the language learned in a classroom to situations outside the classroom.
The objective of the Situational Language Teaching Method is to teach apractical command of the four basic skills of language, goals it shares with most methods of language teaching. Practice techniques employed generally consist of guided repetition and substitution activities, including chorus repetition, dictation, drills, and controlled oral-based reading and writing tasks. Other oral-practice techniques are sometimes used, including pair practice and group work.
The Audio-Lingual Method
Audio-Lingual Method was developed during the Second World War. It is a method of foreign language teaching which emphasizes the teaching of listening and speaking before reading and writing. It uses dialogues as the main form of language presentation and drills as the main training techniques. Mother tongue is discouraged in the classroom.
The entry of the United States into World War II had a significant effect on language teaching in America. It heightened the need for Americans to become orally proficient in the languages of both their allies and their enemies, and the time was ripe for a language teaching revolution. To supply the U.S. Government with personnel who were fluent in German, French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and other languages, and who could work as interpreters, it was necessary to set up special language training program. The government commissioned American universities to develop foreign language programs for military personnel. The US military provided the impetus with funding for special, intensive language courses that focused on aural/oral skills; these courses came to be known as the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) or, more colloquially, the “Army Method”. Characteristic of these courses was a great deal of oral activity—pronunciation and pattern drills and conversation practice—with virtually none of the grammar and translation found in traditional classes.
The Army Specialized Training Program lasted only for about two years but attracted considerable attention in the popular press and in the academic community. Soon, the success of the Army Method and the revived national interest in foreign languages spurred educational institutions to adopt the new methodology. In all its variations and adaptations, the Army Method came to be known in the 1950s as the Audio-Lingual Method.
The Audio-Lingual Method was firmly grounded in linguistic and psychological theory: structuralism and behaviorism. The central learning principles are the following:
1. Foreign language learning is basically a process of mechanical habit formation. Good habits are formed by giving correct responses rather than by making mistakes through memorizing dialogues and performing pattern drills, the chances of producing mistakes are minimized. Language is verbal behavior—that is, the automatic production and comprehension of utterances—and can be learned by inducing the students to do likewise.
2. Language skills are learned more effectively if the items to be learned in the target language are presented in spoken form before they are seen in written form. Aural-oral training is needed to provide the foundation for the development of other language skills.
3. Analogy provides a better foundation for language learning than analysis. Analogy involves the processes of generalization and discrimination. Explanations of rules are therefore not given until students have practiced a pattern in a variety of contexts and are thought to have acquired a perception of the analogies involved. Drills can enable learners to form correct analogies. Hence the approach to the teaching of grammar is essentially inductive rather than deductive.
4. The meanings that the words of a language have for the native speaker can be learned only in a linguistic and cultural context and not in isolation. Teaching a language thus involves teaching aspects of the cultural system of the people who speak the language. (Rivers, 1964: 19-22)
The characteristics of the Audio-Lingual Method may be summed up in the following list (adapted from Prator & Celce-Murcia, 1979):
1. New material is presented in dialogue form;
2. There is dependence on mimicry, memorization of set phrases, and over-learning;
3. Structures are sequenced by means of contrastive analysis and taught one at a time;
4. Structures patterns are taught using repetitive drills;
5. There is little or no grammatical explanation. Grammar is taught by inductive analogy rather than by deductive explanation;
6. Vocabulary is strictly limited and learned in context;
7. There is much use of tapes, language labs, and visual aids;
8. Great importance is attached to pronunciation;
9. Very little use of the mother tongue by teachers is permitted;
10. Successful responses are immediately reinforced;
11. There is a great effort to get students to produce error-free utterances;
12. There is a tendency to manipulate language and disregard content.