Audio-Lingual Method: Errors & Horrors

Errors and Horrors of the Audio-Lingual Method

by Omar García Pérez

Subject: Teaching English as a Foreign Language: Methodology I (with professor Lic. Elizabeth Sosa Piña)

In thus characterizing the title of this essay, I will talk about what I consider the worst mistakes of the Audio-Lingual Method (ALM). I specifically will discuss how both its theoretical and practical foundations must be reasonably put into question if one analyzes them, not superficially, but in a deep way.

First of all, I must dispute the idea that the ALM has “strong” theoretical base, as Larson and other authors claim. It is no secret that behaviorist theory (the one in which the ALM is mostly based) has been severely criticized for years, due to its neglect of basic aspects of human language learning. The same goes applies to structural linguistics which, in the words of Chomsky, comes to be an “inadequate conception of language" (1972:20). Though still widely held in countless classrooms today (Yun Du, 2011:32), it is time for contemporary teachers to understand that language learning is more than “just” a system of words and that learning is more than just repetition, imitation and memorization undergone by means of conditioning, reinforcement, and habit-formation.

A second problem must be found in the weakness of the “natural way”-argument, which retains the idea that the best way for someone to learn a language is "hearing before speaking, speaking before reading, and reading before writing” (Goldstein 2014:40). This is certainly true for the way in which a baby learns his L1. Nonetheless, it must be noticed that there are serious differences between the way that we learn an L1 and a L2. One of these is very obvious: a grown-up person, unlike a baby, already has the ability to speak, read or write; and thus, it may be slightly foolish for a teacher to prevent the learner to use an ability he already has, if this can help him to accelerate the learning process.

Once the theoretical basis of ALM is weakened, one just has to consider the practical implications with the dialogue-based lessons. One the one hand, it would be much more practical just to show a video of a well-planed prepared conversation, than to have the teacher to serve as an actor and make the SS’s to learn his dialogues. On the other hand, let us admit that the idea of memorization without understanding is a naïve principle for someone whose main purpose is to learn to express his or her own ideas, rather than the ideas of others or pre-fabricated paragraph. Otherwise, the only thing that SS’s would be exercising would be their memory, rather not real linguistic production.

In addition, the repetition of these dialogues throughout a prolonged period of time, not only makes me feel as if the teacher would be mistaking students with parrots, but also tells me that in such cases, the learning process would be taking much more time than what it should. Not to mention the lack of a wider exposure to language. Another mistake, in my opinion, is the principle of “no grammar rules” given. This is even unrealistic if one should try to follow the so-called natural way of learning, because even children are meant to be taught grammar at elementary school in order to improve the use of language. It may be true that a person could eventually figure out all these grammar rules and learn how to use them in a spoken way, but this would possibly require many years of practice. Just think about how much time it would take for someone to figure out all the grammatical tenses or the verb forms.

The ALM, I believe, may be interested for people whose only need is to communicate in the spoken form, in very basic terms, but, to be honest, I would never ever use it for anything else because of its imperative behaviorist tactics, who are tedious and repetitive, and the time it would take for learners to pass from one topic to another. 

References:

• Chomsky, Noam. (1972) Language and Mind. Enlarged Ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
• Larsen-Freeman, Diane (2000). Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. Teaching Techniques in English as a Second Language (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-435574-2.
• Goldstein, Irwin (2014). Language and ESOL Methodology- a unique perspective. Trafford Publishing
• Yun Du, Xiang (2011) Gender and Diversity in a Problem and Project Based Learning Environment, River Publishers