The Audio - Lingual Method
The Audio - Lingual Method
Introduction
The Audio-Lingual Method, like the Direct Method we examined, has a goal very different from that of the Grammar-Translation Method[1]. The Audio-Lingual Method was developed in the United States during World War II. At that time there was a need for people to learn foreign languages rapidly for military purposes. As we have seen, the Grammar-Translation Method did not prepare people to use the target language. While communication in the target language was the goal of the Direct Method, there were at the time exciting new ideas about language and learning emanating(produce or show) from the disciplines of descriptive linguistics and behavioral psychology. These ideas led to the development of the Audio-Lingual Method. Some of the principles are similar to those of the Direct Method, but many are different, having been based upon conceptions of language and learning from these two disciplines.
Theory of language[2] The theory of language underlying Audiolingualism was derived from a view proposed by American linguists in the 1950s - a view that came to be known as structural linguistics. Linguistics had emerged as a flourishing academic discipline in the 1950s, and the structural theory of language constituted its backbone. Structural linguistics had developed in part as a reaction to traditional grammar. Many nineteenth-century language scholars had viewed modern European languages as corruptions of classical grammar, and languages from other parts of the world were viewed as primitive and underdeveloped. By the 1930s, the scientific approach to the study of language was thought to consist of collecting examples of what speakers said and analyzing them according to different levels of structural organization rather than according to categories of Latin grammar. In 1961 the American linguist William Moulton, in a report prepared for the 9th International Congress of Linguists, proclaimed the linguistic
Introduction
The Audio-Lingual Method, like the Direct Method we examined, has a goal very different from that of the Grammar-Translation Method[1]. The Audio-Lingual Method was developed in the United States during World War II. At that time there was a need for people to learn foreign languages rapidly for military purposes. As we have seen, the Grammar-Translation Method did not prepare people to use the target language. While communication in the target language was the goal of the Direct Method, there were at the time exciting new ideas about language and learning emanating(produce or show) from the disciplines of descriptive linguistics and behavioral psychology. These ideas led to the development of the Audio-Lingual Method. Some of the principles are similar to those of the Direct Method, but many are different, having been based upon conceptions of language and learning from these two disciplines.
Theory of language[2] The theory of language underlying Audiolingualism was derived from a view proposed by American linguists in the 1950s - a view that came to be known as structural linguistics. Linguistics had emerged as a flourishing academic discipline in the 1950s, and the structural theory of language constituted its backbone. Structural linguistics had developed in part as a reaction to traditional grammar. Many nineteenth-century language scholars had viewed modern European languages as corruptions of classical grammar, and languages from other parts of the world were viewed as primitive and underdeveloped. By the 1930s, the scientific approach to the study of language was thought to consist of collecting examples of what speakers said and analyzing them according to different levels of structural organization rather than according to categories of Latin grammar. In 1961 the American linguist William Moulton, in a report prepared for the 9th International Congress of Linguists, proclaimed the linguistic