The Audio lingual method or the Army Method is a style of teaching used in language
Instruction. It is based on behaviorist ideology, which professes that certain trait of living things, and in this case humans, could be trained through a system of reinforcement and correct use of a trait would receive positive feedback while incorrect use of that trait would receive negative feedback.
So in the Audio Lingual Method, the instructor would present the correct model of a sentence and the students would have to repeat it. The teacher would then continue by presenting new words for the students to sample in the same structure.
In audio lingual’s there is no explicit grammar instruction so that everything is simply memorized in form. The idea is for the students to practice the particular construct until they can use it spontaneously. In this manner, the lessons are built on static drills in which the students have little or no control on their own output; the teacher is expecting a particular response and not providing that will result in a student receiving negative feedback. As mentioned, lessons in the classroom focus on the correct imitation of the teacher by the students. Not only are the students expected to produce the correct output, but attention is also paid to correct pronunciation. Although correct grammar is expected in usage, no explicit grammatical instruction is given. Furthermore, the target language is the only language to be used in the classroom.
This method is one of the three main ways to teach a foreign language. Along with "the direct method," the audio lingual approach keeps the majority of the language instruction in the target language. Audio lingual teaching concentrates on drills that teach grammar while the direct method concentrates more on vocabulary. When the grammar of the target language is explained in the native language, the method is called communicative language teaching.
The method relies on
References: http://www.ehow.com/about 6551574 audio linguallearning.html#ixzz1MIQKJcss Harmer, Jeremy. The Practice of English Language Teaching. 3rd Edition. pg. 79-80. Essex: Pearson Education Ltd., 2001