"ALM"
stands for
THE AUDIO-LINGUAL METHOD -2- PENULTIMATE
A cut-in
The first part of this article did not please one of my friends. Well, that’s pretty natural to disagree on certain points. After all we are not of the same knowledge. We haven’t read the same books, the same articles, the same literature and that’s what makes each of us so unique and individual. Every one of us got his own stream of thinking and analysis and that’s something again that can be only qualified as pretty normal and natural. What is not natural nor normal is to try to thrust one’s own way of seeing things on another person. I mean trying to impose one’s believes and perceptions on another free, individual person.
As I said before and to put it succinctly this time, to disagree is quite natural but to be fanatic to one’s own believes is what is not at all natural. Our disagreements and differences should be, on the contrary, taken as a source of more knowledge and enrichment to whatever field.
My first article, ALM stands for the Audio-Lingual Method, is not at all misleading or mistaken in its points. When I described the aforementioned method as a fiasco, I was voicing the thoughts of the references I based the article on and on which side I stand as a supporter. It’s just undeniable that the ALM did not achieve so much to impress us with and all that is limited in such a way I personally judge it as a fiasco.
As for the part in which I was lampooned on the errors of others, I here stand completely blameless. Normally, a researcher should understand, check and especially be selective to what he is collecting of data that is of viable importance to the development of his own research. I am not to blame if somebody decides one day to cut and paste and then present my article to an audience, in my way or another.
Last but not the least, isn’t this a blog? A personal journal where one can voice whatever he thinks of, be it right or not.
All that aside, here is the second and penultimate part of our article:
"ALM" STANDS FOR
THE AUDIO-LINGUAL METHOD
-2- PENULTIMATE
Role of Ss. Native tongue
An ALM-led classroom does not allow any other language inside but the target language. That is a belief that goes back to and inherited from the previous method, I mean the Direct Method, which came with the idea of monolingual teaching/ learning in an attempt to further enhance students’ learning through much exposure to the target language. Interfering is the native tongue for those believing in the ALM and a contrastive analysis between both languages is usually conducted to identify where mostly the native tongue would interfere. The results of which analysis are exploited to anticipate learning problems and their viable solutions.
Errors/ mistakes
These are not tolerated. A teacher in their implementation of the ALM might get angry and fussy at any mistake or error produced by students. To that, contrastive analysis and over learning are deployed to shun over mistakes and errors.
Evaluation. How is it achieved?
Mostly discrete-items based. Every question in a test would focus on one point of the language learnt at a time. E.g. supply the appropriate verb form in these sentences.
Typical techniques of the Audio-Lingual Method
A technique is, by definition, any exercise, activity or device that has been or is being used in-class to realize lesson objective or (s). The AL method, as any one of its sisters, made a call to a wide collection of techniques/ activities to achieve its teaching/ learning objectives, a collection of which here is an account:
a- Dialog Memorization:
Traditionally, an ALM lesson begins in a dialog or short conversation which is later memorized either through mimicry or applied role playing. To this latter, there are three ways:
1- Students take the role of one character of a dialog and the teacher takes the other with roles switching after a while.
2- One half of the class plays the role of one character from the dialog and the other half plays the other with roles switching after a while.
3- Or else, pair-work in which two students perform the dialog before their classmates.
b- Backward Build-up Drill:
A drill used to teach bugging lines. It consists of breaking up any student frustrating line into small units and then repeating it backward, one unit at a time. E.g. how are you? You take “you” as a first unit, “are you” as the second unit, and “how are you” as the last unit. Every unit should be repeated/ drilled a sufficient number of times, especially the last unit.
c- Transformation Drill:
A grammatical tool, as a matter of fact, in which students are asked to transform sentences of one form into another form. As, for example, transforming an affirmative sentence into a negative-affirmative one, a passive sentence into an active one or a simple statement into a question.
d- Question and Answer Drill:
Students are required, in such a drill, to answer questions and ask others as accurately and quickly as possible.
e- Complete the Dialog:
It simply consists of a dialog of which some linguistic items, grammatical or lexical, are dropped and which students should supply on their own or from a suggested box of possible answers.
f- Single-Slot Substitution Drill:
It goes in this way: The teacher states a line from the dialog, then uses a word or a phrase as a cue that students, when repeating the line, in the sentence in the correct place. E.g. “how old are you?” (Cues are: she/ he/ they), and the answer would be: “how old is he?”; “how old is she?”; “how old are they?”
g- Multiple-Slot Substitution Drill:
Akin to the previous drill with the exception that instead of providing one single cue to substitute, here the teacher provides a multiplicity of cues (two or more) that Ss. Should substitute and make any changes, as needed, to the structure of the sentence like subject-verb agreement.
E.g. She is playing in the school yard (cues: they/ go/ the park)
h- Repetition drill:
It is used to teach conversations/ dialogs. It simply consists of Ss. repeating lines of a given dialog as accurately as possible.
References:
* Diane-Larsen, Freeman. Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. England: Oxford University Press, 1990.
* H. Douglas Brown. Principles of Language learning and Teaching. US: Prentice-Hall, 1987.
Prepared By: Nouamane ERRIFKI
P.S: to be continued
stands for
THE AUDIO-LINGUAL METHOD -2- PENULTIMATE
A cut-in
The first part of this article did not please one of my friends. Well, that’s pretty natural to disagree on certain points. After all we are not of the same knowledge. We haven’t read the same books, the same articles, the same literature and that’s what makes each of us so unique and individual. Every one of us got his own stream of thinking and analysis and that’s something again that can be only qualified as pretty normal and natural. What is not natural nor normal is to try to thrust one’s own way of seeing things on another person. I mean trying to impose one’s believes and perceptions on another free, individual person.
As I said before and to put it succinctly this time, to disagree is quite natural but to be fanatic to one’s own believes is what is not at all natural. Our disagreements and differences should be, on the contrary, taken as a source of more knowledge and enrichment to whatever field.
My first article, ALM stands for the Audio-Lingual Method, is not at all misleading or mistaken in its points. When I described the aforementioned method as a fiasco, I was voicing the thoughts of the references I based the article on and on which side I stand as a supporter. It’s just undeniable that the ALM did not achieve so much to impress us with and all that is limited in such a way I personally judge it as a fiasco.
As for the part in which I was lampooned on the errors of others, I here stand completely blameless. Normally, a researcher should understand, check and especially be selective to what he is collecting of data that is of viable importance to the development of his own research. I am not to blame if somebody decides one day to cut and paste and then present my article to an audience, in my way or another.
Last but not the least, isn’t this a blog? A personal journal where one can voice whatever he thinks of, be it right or not.
All that aside, here is the second and penultimate part of our article:
"ALM" STANDS FOR
THE AUDIO-LINGUAL METHOD
-2- PENULTIMATE
Role of Ss. Native tongue
An ALM-led classroom does not allow any other language inside but the target language. That is a belief that goes back to and inherited from the previous method, I mean the Direct Method, which came with the idea of monolingual teaching/ learning in an attempt to further enhance students’ learning through much exposure to the target language. Interfering is the native tongue for those believing in the ALM and a contrastive analysis between both languages is usually conducted to identify where mostly the native tongue would interfere. The results of which analysis are exploited to anticipate learning problems and their viable solutions.
Errors/ mistakes
These are not tolerated. A teacher in their implementation of the ALM might get angry and fussy at any mistake or error produced by students. To that, contrastive analysis and over learning are deployed to shun over mistakes and errors.
Evaluation. How is it achieved?
Mostly discrete-items based. Every question in a test would focus on one point of the language learnt at a time. E.g. supply the appropriate verb form in these sentences.
Typical techniques of the Audio-Lingual Method
A technique is, by definition, any exercise, activity or device that has been or is being used in-class to realize lesson objective or (s). The AL method, as any one of its sisters, made a call to a wide collection of techniques/ activities to achieve its teaching/ learning objectives, a collection of which here is an account:
a- Dialog Memorization:
Traditionally, an ALM lesson begins in a dialog or short conversation which is later memorized either through mimicry or applied role playing. To this latter, there are three ways:
1- Students take the role of one character of a dialog and the teacher takes the other with roles switching after a while.
2- One half of the class plays the role of one character from the dialog and the other half plays the other with roles switching after a while.
3- Or else, pair-work in which two students perform the dialog before their classmates.
b- Backward Build-up Drill:
A drill used to teach bugging lines. It consists of breaking up any student frustrating line into small units and then repeating it backward, one unit at a time. E.g. how are you? You take “you” as a first unit, “are you” as the second unit, and “how are you” as the last unit. Every unit should be repeated/ drilled a sufficient number of times, especially the last unit.
c- Transformation Drill:
A grammatical tool, as a matter of fact, in which students are asked to transform sentences of one form into another form. As, for example, transforming an affirmative sentence into a negative-affirmative one, a passive sentence into an active one or a simple statement into a question.
d- Question and Answer Drill:
Students are required, in such a drill, to answer questions and ask others as accurately and quickly as possible.
e- Complete the Dialog:
It simply consists of a dialog of which some linguistic items, grammatical or lexical, are dropped and which students should supply on their own or from a suggested box of possible answers.
f- Single-Slot Substitution Drill:
It goes in this way: The teacher states a line from the dialog, then uses a word or a phrase as a cue that students, when repeating the line, in the sentence in the correct place. E.g. “how old are you?” (Cues are: she/ he/ they), and the answer would be: “how old is he?”; “how old is she?”; “how old are they?”
g- Multiple-Slot Substitution Drill:
Akin to the previous drill with the exception that instead of providing one single cue to substitute, here the teacher provides a multiplicity of cues (two or more) that Ss. Should substitute and make any changes, as needed, to the structure of the sentence like subject-verb agreement.
E.g. She is playing in the school yard (cues: they/ go/ the park)
h- Repetition drill:
It is used to teach conversations/ dialogs. It simply consists of Ss. repeating lines of a given dialog as accurately as possible.
References:
* Diane-Larsen, Freeman. Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. England: Oxford University Press, 1990.
* H. Douglas Brown. Principles of Language learning and Teaching. US: Prentice-Hall, 1987.
Prepared By: Nouamane ERRIFKI
P.S: to be continued
4 comments:
Thanks for making it clear about the difference between a Technique and a paradigm.
you are welcome, buddy! just knock and i'll answer you, sooner or later.but my answer is garanteed!!!
thanks for calling in man....
Nouamane ERRIFKI
Thank you very much for making clear the types of drills
Thank you very much for making clear the types of drills.
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