Teaching approaches: what is audiolingualism? There seems to...

Teaching approaches: what is audiolingualism?

There seems to be a widely held perception amongst language teachers that methods and approaches have finite historical boundaries – that the Grammar-Translation approach is dead, for example. Similarly, audiolingualism was in vogue in the 1960s but died out in the 70s after Chomsky’s famous attack on behaviorism in language learning.

In this context, it is worth considering for a moment what goes on in the typical language learning classroom. Do you ever ask your students to repeat phrases or whole sentences, for example? Do you drill the pronunciation and intonation of utterances? […] If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then, consciously or unconsciously, you are using techniques that are features of the audiolingual approach. This approach has its roots in the USA during World War II […].

The audiolingual approach was also based on the behaviorist theory of learning, which held that language […] is a form of behavior. In the behaviorist view, language is elicited by a stimulus and that stimulus then triggers a response. The response in turn then produces some kind of reinforcement, which, if positive, encourages the repetition of the response in the future or, if negative, its suppression. When transposed to the classroom, this gives us the classic pattern drill- Model […]. In its purest form audiolingualism aims to promote mechanical habit-formation through repetition […].

While some of this might seem amusingly rigid in these enlightened times, it is worth reflecting on actual classroom practice and noticing when activities occur that can be said to have their basis in the audiolingual approach. Most teachers will at some point require learners to repeat examples of grammatical structures […]. Although the audiolingual approach in its purest form has many weaknesses, to dismiss the audiolingual approach as an outmoded method of the 1960s is to ignore the reality of current classroom practice […].

Disponível em: <http://www.onestopenglish.com/methodology/methodology/teachingapproaches/teaching-approaches-what-is-audiolingualism/146488.article>. Acesso em: 15 fev. 2017.

Na leitura do texto, considera-se que