第五章 听说法

1、起源1950年代于美国，主要为军事目的。早期称为informant method 请本族语的人作为 the informant, the linguist 语言模仿的源泉，并且监管学习的经验。

2、人物：charles Fries贡献最大，提出此法，又称为aural-oral method or structural approach,是把结构主义的语言学和行为主义的心理学相结合形成此法

3、教学步骤1. recognition 2.imination and repitition 3.pattern drills 4. follow-up activityies

4、基本特点 1、区分四种技巧，强调先听说，后读写2、用对话来展示语言3、强调一定的实践技巧，mimicry ,memorization ,and pattern drills 3、不鼓励用母语。4、用语言实验室和教具

5、主要目的：1、使学生用目标语交流2、student achieve accurate pronunciation and correct grammar 3.在语境中能快速反应。4、the development of mastery in all four language skills 5.use it automatically without stop to think .

6.主要技巧：1.repetition drill 2.simple substitution drill 3.progressive drill 4.transformation drill 5.question-and-answer drill 6.expansion drill 7.clause combination drill 8.chain drill 9. backward build-up drill 10.mini-dialogue 11.completion 12.use of minimal pairs

background---The Audiolingual Method was developed in the U.S. during the Second World War. At that time, the U.S. government found it a great necessity to set up a special language training programme to supply the war with language personnel. Therefore, the government commissioned American universities to develop foreign language programmes for military personnel. Thus the Army Specialized Training Programme (ASTP) was established in 1942. The objectives of the army programme were for students to attain conversational proficiency in a variety of foreign languages. The method used was known as the “informant method”, since it used a native speaker of the language, the informant, and a linguist. The informant served as a source of language for imitation, and the linguist supervised the learning experience. This intensive system adopted by the army achieved excellent results. Linguists and applied linguists during this period were becoming increasingly involved in the teaching of English as a foreign language. In 1941 the first English language Institute in the U.S. was established in the University of Michigan. The director of the institute was Charles Fries, who applied the principles of structural linguistics to language teaching. The result is an approach which advocated aural training first, then pronunciation training, followed by speaking, reading and writing. The emergence of the Audiolingual Method resulted from the increased attention to foreign language teaching in the U.S. towards the end of the 1950s. The need for a radical change and rethinking of foreign language teaching methodology made language teaching specialists set about developing a method that was applicable to conditions in U.S. college and university classroom. They drew on the earlier experience of the army programmes and the Aural-Oral or Structural Approach developed by Fries and his colleagues, adding insights taken from behaviorist psychology. This combination of structural linguistic theory, aural-oral procedures, and behaviourist psychology led to the Audiolingual Method, which was widely adopted for teaching foreign languages in North American colleges and universities.

Main features--- By drawing on the structural linguistics and behaviourist psychology, the Audiolingual method formed its own distinctive characteristics. There are mainly five of them: a. Separation of language skills into listening, speaking, reading and writing, with emphasis on the teaching of listening and speaking before reading and writing; b. Use of dialogues as the chief means of presenting the language; c. Emphasis on certain practice techniques: mimicry, memorization and pattern drills; d. Discouraging the use of the mother tongue in the classroom; e. Use of language lab.

Objectives---The general objectives of the Audiolingual Method is to enable the target language communicatively. Short-range objectives include training in listening comprehension, accurate pronunciation, reading comprehension and production of correct sentences in writing. In other words, the objectives of the Audiolingual Method are the development of mastery in all four language skills, beginning with listening and speaking, and using these as a basis for the teaching of reading and writing. Long-range objective or the ultimate goal is to develop in the students the same types of abilities that native speakers have, to use it automatically without stopping to think.

Procedures---In a typical audiolingual lesson the following procedures will be observed: a. Recognition; Students first hear a model dialogue (either read by the teacher or on the tape) containing the key structures that are the focus of the lesson and try to understand the meaning of the dialogue with the help of the teacher’s gestures, mime, context or situation established in advance. b. Imitation and repetition: The students repeat each line of the dialogue, individually and in chorus. The students must imitate the right pronunciation, intonation and fluency. c. Patterns drill: Certain key structures from the dialogue are selected and used as the basic for pattern drills of different kinds. d. Follow-up activities: The students now are allowed to look at their textbooks. They are usually asked to do some follow-up reading, writing or vocabulary activities. This will guide their use of the language.

Techniques--- Dialogue and pattern practice form the basis of audiolingual classroom practice. Yhe use of them is a distinctive feature of the Audiolingual Method. The techniques used by the audiolingual Method are: a. Repetition drill: This drill is often used to teach the lines of the dialogue. Students are asked to repeat the teacher’s model as accurately and as quickly as possible. b. Substitution drill: The students repeat the line from the dialogue which the teacher has given them, substituting the cue into the line in its proper place. c. Question-and answer drill: The drill gives students practice with answering questions. d. Expansion drill: This drill helps students to produce longer sentences bit by bit, gradually achieving fluency. e. Clause combination drill: Students learn to combine two simple sentences into a complex ones. f. Backward build-up drill: This drill is used when a long line of a dialogue is giving students trouble. The teacher breaks down the line into several parts. The students repeat a part of the sentence, usually the last phrase of the line. Then, following the teacher’ cue, the students expand what they are repeating part by part until they are able to repeat the entire line. g. Chain drill: A chain drill gets its name from the chain of conversation that forms around the classroom as students, one-by-one, ask and answer questions of each other. The teacher begins the chain by greeting a particular student, or asking him a question. That student responds, then turns to the student sitting next to him. h. Completion: Students hear an utterance that is complete except for one word, then repeat the utterance in completed form. i. Use of minimal pairs: The teacher works with pairs of words which differ in only one sound; students are first asked to find the difference between the two words and later to say the two words.

Theory of language--- The theory of language underlying Audiolingualism was derived from a view proposed by American linguists in the 1930s and 1940s. The view then came to be known as structural linguistics with Bloomfield and Fries as its representatives. Structural linguistics views language as a system of structurally related elements for the expression of meaning. These elements are phonemes, morphemes, words, structures, and sentence types. The grammatical system consists of a list of grammatical elements and rules for their linear combination into words, phrases and sentences. According to a structural view, language has the following characteristics: a. Elements in a language are produced in a rule-governed(structural) way. b. Language samples could be exhaustively described at any structural level of description. c. Language is structured like a pyramid, that is, linguistic levels are systems within systems. d. Language is speech, not writing. e. languages are different. The views of language above offered the foundation for thhe Audiolingual Method.

Theory of learning---a. Behaviourist psychology The learning theory of Audiolingualism is the behavioural psychology which is an empirically based approach to the study of human behaviour. Behaviourism tries to explain how an external event (a stimulus) caused a change in the behaviour of an individual (a response) without using concepts like “mind ” or “ideas” or any kind of mental behaviour. Behaviourist psychology states that people are conditioned to learn many forms of behaviour, including language, through the process of training or conditioning. b. The three crucial elements in learning: a stimulus, a response and reinforcement. The occurrence of these behaviours is dependent upon three crucial elements in learning: a stimulus, which serves to elicit behaviour; a response triggered by a stimulus; and reinforcement, which serves to mark the response as being appropriate (or inappropriate) and encourages the repetition (or suppression) of the response in the future. Learning is thus described as the formation of association between stimuli and responses. c. The application of this theory to language learning. To apply this theory to language learning is to identify the organism as the foreign language learner, the behaviour as verbal behaviour, the stimulus as what is taught (languagr input), the response as the learner’s reaction to the stimulus, and the reinforcement as the approval or praise (or discouragement) of the teacher or fellow students. d. Language learning: a mechanical process of habit formation. According to this behaviourist psychology, learning a language is a process of acquiring a set of appropriate language stimulus-response chains, a mechanical process of habit formation.

Advantages---a. The first method to have a theory: The andiolingual theory is probably the first language teaching theory that openly claims to be derived from linguistics and psychology. b. Making language teaching possible to large groups of learners: It attempts to make language learning accessible to large groups of ordinary learners. With large classes, drills are of particular use in that they maximize student participation. c. Emphasizing sentence production, control over grammatical structures and development of oral ability: The Audiolingual Method stresses syntactical progression and uses pattern drills to help the students gain control over grammatical structures which is a much more interesting way of learning grammar than working through written exercises. What’s more, drilling can be positively beneficial in helping a student to develop his oral ability. d. developing simple techniques and making use of language lab: It leads to the development of simple techniques of varied, graded and intensive practice of specific features of the language, and more scientifically selected and systematically arranged materials and structural patterns to go with. Moreover, the teaching techniques with tape recordings and language lab drills offer practice in speaking and listening which are considered of primary importance in language learning. e. Developing the separation of the language skills: The Audiolingual Method develops the separation of the language skills into a pedagogical device, that is , listening, speaking, reading and writing. It lays emphasis on listening and speaking which did not gain so much importance from Grammar-Translation Method.

Definition---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.

Disadvantages---a. Weak basis of its theory: The theoretical basis of the Audiolingual Method was found to be weak. The behaviourist theory could not possibly serve as a model of how humans learn language, since much of human language is not imitated behaviour but is created anew from underlying knowledge of abstract rules. b. Not developing language competence, lack of effectiveness, and boredom caused by endless pattern drill: Techniques such as pattern practice, drilling, memorization, etc. might lead to language like behaviour, but they are not resulting in competence. Teachers complain about the lack of effectiveness of the techniques in the long run, and students complain about the boredom caused by endless pattern drills. c. Learners having little control over their learning: Learners play a reactive role by responding to stimuli, and thus have little control over the content, pace or style of learning. They are not encouraged to initiate interaction, because this may lead to mistakes. d. Teacher’s domination of the class: The teacher’s role is central and active. It is the teacher who always dominates the class. The teacher models the target language, controls the direction and pace of learning, and monitors and corrects the learner’s performance. e. Teacher-oriented materials: Materials in the Audiolingual Method are primarily teacher-oriented. The teacher’s book contains the structured sequence of lessons to be followed, and the dialogues, drills and other practice activities.

-- conditions are needed if you want to apply the Audiolingual Method in your teaching?---The general objective of the Audiolingual Method is to enable the students to use the target language communicatively. They should be able to respond quicklyand accurately in speech situations. Therefore, teaching materials should be structurally-based, the chief means of presenting the language should be the use of dialogues. And it is better to have tape recorders and other audiovisual equipment which often have central roles in an audiolingual classroom. A language lab is considered essential in it. If these conditions are met, we could possibly apply the Audiolingual Method in our teaching.

--anything useful in your teaching situation? Why?---Yes, there are many useful things we can learn from the Audiolingual Method: a. It states language is a structured system and rule governed. If language learning is organized according to its structure, language learning would be easier, especially to adult learners. b. The Audiolingual Method considers language ability made up of four skills and these skills can be taught separately. Since the natural order of skill acquisition is listening, speaking, reading and writing, the Method gives the primary stress to the first two of the four skills. Speech is more basic to language than the written form, and listening and speaking are the basic form of verbal communication. In the classroom, the language skills are taught in the order of listening, speaking, reading and writing. C. Using patterning drills is the center of practice in Audiolingual Method. It can help students not only gain control over grammatical structures, but also develop their oral ability. D. the Audiolingual Method also provides language teachers with many useful techniques. The simple drilling techniques provide varied, graded and intensive practice of specific features of the language. The simple and direct approach is especially appropriate for young students and less gifted ones. Moreover, the teaching techniques with tape recordings and language lab drills offer practice in speaking and listening which are considered of primary importance in language learning.

---Are structure drills valuable pedagogical activities? Why?---Yes, structure drills are valuable pedagogical activities in language learning. With large classes, drills are of particular use in that they can maximize students’ participation. A one-word cue on the part of the teacher elicit a complete utterance from the students and an enormous number of such utterances can be produced within the space of two minutes. With judicious mixing of choral and individual drill, each student can have the chance to respond productively about five times a minute in classes of twenty students or fewer. However, drills should be used judiciously, if over used, students will get bored.

--Could you adapt any of techniques to your own teaching? Why?---Yes, we could adapt some kinds of techniques used by the Audiolingual Method, such as dialogues and pattern drills. The use of dialogues and pattern drills is a distinctive feature of the Audiolingual Method. They form the basis of audiolingual classroom practice. Dialogues are thought to provide meaningful context for the key structures and to illustrate situations in which those structures might be used. Certain sentence patterns and grammar points are included within the dialogue. Various kinds of pattern drills are used for different purposes. Some key structures from the dialogue are selected and used the basis for pattern drills of different kinds.

--Does it make sense to you that language learning results from habit formation? Why?---To a certain extent, language learning results from habit formation. The model of stimulus-response-reinforcement accounts for how a human being learns a language, the stimulus is what is taught(language input), the response is the learner’s reaction to the stimulus, and the reinforcement is the praise of the teacher or fellow students. The habit is the result of stimulus, correct response and reward again and again. The more frequently this happens, the stronger the habit becomes. Language learning is a process of acquiring a set of language stimulus-response chains, a mechanical process of habit formation.

--Is dialogue a useful way to introduce new material? Why?---Yes, dialogue is useful way to introduce new material. Dialogues can provide a natural context for the language forms as long as it is from real communication, not artificially expressed. Dialogues show the learner how language is used in real language interaction, and they can be good models of oral communication. Dialogues are also believed to reflect the cultural aspects of the target language. certain sentence patterns and grammar points are included within the dialogue. These patterns and points are later practiced in drills based on the line of the dialogue.

--Should dialogues be memorized through mimicry of the teacher’s model? Why?---No, dialogues should not be memorized through mimicry of the teacher’s model. A dialogue is an individual case of language communication between two persons. It only tells the students that when the participants take a certain kind of social role, in a certain kind of situation, about a certain topic, conversation goes that way. Dialogues are thought to provide meaningful context for the key structures and to illustrate situations in which those structures might be used. Here, meaning is the center of a dialogue, and human communication varies. No dialogue is held in exactly the same way, in the same kind of situation and about same topic. Students do not have to memorize the teacher’s model. Students should try their best to develop their language competence, including communicative competence, discourse competence and strategic competence, etc, so that they can use the target language communicatively.

--Should the commission of errors be prevented as much as possible? Why?---It depends on the using of language situation and the purpose of language teaching. When the focus of teaching is on language form, and when the students are doing mechanical pattern drills in the classroom, the teacher should correct the students whenever errors are committed. But when the students are engaged in communication, and the focus is on getting meaning across, errors should not be tacked on the spot, because they would be too much concerned with language forms and would never develop oral ability. Unless communication is affected by the errors, students should not be corrected. In the same way, there might be more correction of errors in written than in oral communication.

---Should the major focus be on the structural pattern of the target language? Why?---It depends on the developmental language stages of the learners. The major forms could be on the structural pattern of the target language when your objective at the beginning stage is to get the students to master the structures of the language. It aslso depends on your view of language and your view of language teaching. If you hold that language is a system of structures without considering the other aspects of the language, the major focus should be on the structural patterns. And if you consider language teaching is to teach language as a body of knowledge, not to develop students’ ability as a communication tool, then the focus should be on the structural pattern of the target language. Otherwise, the major focus could be on the other areas.

--Which of the principles of the Audiolingual Method are acceptable to you?---Among the five principles of the Audiolingual Method, we think “Language is speech, not writting” and “Language are different” are more acceptable to us . The former means that language is first speech and written form is only the recording of speech. Speech is more basic to language than the written form. In the classroom, the language skills are taught in the order of listening, speaking, reading and writing. The later means that the native language and the target language have separate linguistic system, so there is usually no exact equivalent between two languages. The habits of the students’ native language would interfere with the students’ attempts to master the target language. They should be kept apart so that the students’ native language interfere as little as possible with the students’ learning of the foreign language.