انگلیسی: آموزش، زبانشناسی، ترجمه، ادبیات

Audiolingualism

Background

As mentioned earlier, by shifting the purpose of language study to oral-aural skills, language teaching methods tried to keep pace with it. DM and SLT were the first steps taken toward this goal. It was at the time when US got involved in World War II. Apparently there was an urgent need for quite a few soldiers and officials proficient in productive skills of many languages such as Japanese, French, German, and Italian. US government called up a large number of its universities to carry the ball and take the responsibility. At that time, the current method of teaching were proved in efficient; hence, linguists, psychologists, anthropologists, and language teachers all were engaged in developing a proper method to teach the American martial different languages of the world. They were pressed to create such a method that could provide the army with good speakers and listeners of other languages in a very short period of time. Finally, Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) was the fruit of their efforts. Among the characteristics of the "Army Method"¹ we can refer to "a great deal of oral activities – pronunciation and pattern drills and conversation practices – with virtually none of the grammar and translation found in traditional classes."² Here, it is not to be neglected that ASTP was n emergency attempt to deal with the language problems in a special situation, war, and has never been a worldwide method in LT. furthermore, this program focus just on oral skills and forgot all about the rest of language properties. The shortcomings paved the road for a new approach in LT to emerge.

Linguists and applied linguists during this period were becoming increasingly involved in the teaching of English as a foreign language. America had now emerged as a major international power. There was a growing demand for foreign expertise in the teaching of English. These factors led to the emergence of the American approach to ESL, which by the mid-1950s had become Audiolingualism.³

Theories of Learning, Teaching, and Classroom Activities

ALM was firmly rooted in psychology and linguistics. Linguistically speaking, structuralism was the school underling this method in 1940s and 1950s. Base on this school, which was highly supported by behaviorism in psychology, "only the publically observable responses could be subject to investigation. An important axiom of structural linguistic was that languages can differ without limit."⁴ According to this tenet, it is all in vein to compare languages together but rather we should try to describe the layers of a language including morphology, phonology, and syntax. There was little if any attention to issues like pragmatics or discourse in this trend. In psychology behaviorism emerged with the claim that learning should not be regarded as a mental process but a mechanical one. Conditioning appeared as a result of this belief. Therefore, a stimulus must be presented to the learner; afterwards, the desired response was to be reinforced by overlearning. There was no room left for errors. Eradication of them was the goal. Kenneth Chastain describes ALM as follow:

The goal was to have students reach a point at which they could use language automatically and unconsciously just as native speakers do. This objective was to be achieved by conditioning students to give automatic, nonthoughtful responses during mimicry-memorization of dialogs and practice with oral pattern drills. Students were to learn the language skills in the same order as in first language learning: listening comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing.⁵

Many activities have been accounted for ALM, but this research elaborates on the most distinctive and controversial features of this method and also CLT.

Teaching grammar has always been challenging. In classic methods deductive style was adopted while in ALM inductive style replaced it. Nevertheless, in subsequent methods the application of both styles was emphasized, of course when the situation demanded.

To make a long story short, the researcher has outlined some of the most outstanding characteristics of ALM. These factors, however, are not all the details that could be mentioned in this regard. One can say that in ALM:

·                    The focus is on structure and form rather than meaning.

·                    Memorization of structure-based dialogs is desired.

·                    Language items are not necessarily contextualized.

·                    Language learning is learning structures, sounds, or words.

·                    Mastery, or overlearning, is sought.

·                    Drilling is a central technique.

·                    Native-speaker-like pronunciation is sought.

·                    Grammatical explanation is avoided.

·                    Communicative activities only come after a long process of rigid drills and exercises.

·                    The use of the students' native language is forbidden.

·                    Translation is forbidden at early levels.

·                    Reading and writing are deferred till speech is mastered.

·                    The target linguistic system will be learned through the over teaching of the patterns of the system.

·                    Linguistic competence is the desired goal.

·                    Varieties of languages are reorganized but not emphasized.

·                    The sequence of units is determined solely by principle of linguistic complexity.

·                    The teacher controls the learners and prevents them from doing anything that conflicts with the theory.

·                    Language is a habit so errors must be prevented at all costs.

·                    Accuracy is a primary goal.

·                    Students are expected to interact with the language system embodied in machines or controlled material.

·                    The teacher is expected to specify the language that students are to use.

·                    Intrinsic motivation will spring from an interest in the structure of the language.

After getting familiar with main activities of ALM, it is time to elucidate the teacher and learner roles in this method. As mentioned earlier, language was considered as a set of habits⁶ that must be reinforced. Reward and punishment were two basic devises in the hands of teacher to control students learning. Language skills were taught in a particular order in which listening and speaking were prior to reading and writing. Hence, the teacher was supposed to have a native-like pronunciation and fluency. In addition, he was to bind himself to the tenets of the method and override them never. Such a teacher is the authority of the class. He specifies the class activities and plays a very active role. Any subject matter is under his monitoring. The ALM is a teacher-centered method after all.

Learners, on the other side, are considered to be obedient, hard-workers and persistent. Under these features, they would be able to overcome the back-breaking activities of ALM such as repetition, pattern drills and many other toils.

All in all, ALM despite of the great popularity gained in the mid-20^th century, faded out gradually. The backbone of this method in both its theory of teaching and learning was called into question. The time was ripe for this widespread method to meet its end. New trends in psychology and linguistics blocked the way of behaviorism and structuralism and paved the way for linguists like Noam Chomsky and his theories. To reject structuralism, Chomsky demonstrated that the current structural theories of language were unable to account for the fundamental characteristic of language that is the creativity and uniqueness of individual sentences.