Topic: Theoretical bases for the audio-lingual method Objectives Trainees will be able to give reasons for the design and procedures of the Audio-lingual Method.

Lesson One Giving Reasons for the Audio- lingual Method Pre-task activities Step One: discussing the language theories underlying the method. Step Two: discussing the language learning theories underlying the method. While-task activities Step Three: group work to give reasons for the method. Post-task activities Step Seven: group speaker reporting to the class.

The Audiolingual Method ( American Army Specialized Training Program) Language has the following characteristics: Theory of language. American structuralism. 1. Elements in a language are produced in a rule- governed(structured) way. 2. Language samples could be exhaustively described at any structural level of description. 3. Language is structured like a pyramid, that is, linguistic levels are systems within systems. 4. The structural linguists believed that language is speech. 5. The structural linguists believed that languages are different.

Theory of language learning Behaviourist psychology (Behaviorism): People are conditioned to learn many forms of behaviour, including language, through the process of training or conditioning. 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.

The basic theoretical principles of the Audiolingual Method.(Moulton, 1961) 1. Language is speech, not writing. 2. A language is what its native speakers say, not what someone thinks they ought to say. 3. Language are different. 4. A Language is a set of habits. 5. Teach the language, not about the language.

American Structuralism Origin of American structuralism Contribution of Franz Boas( 鲍阿斯） Contribution of Edward Sapir （萨丕尔） Contribution of Leonard Bloomfield （布龙 菲尔德） Influence of behaviorism Main features of structuralism

Origin of American structuralism American structuralism started at the beginning of the 20th century and was very popular and influential in the 1930s and 1940s throughout the world.

Contribution of Franz Boas ( 鲍阿斯） Boas, as an anthropologist, worked in the field for about 20 years at the turn of the century, recording the native languages and cultures of American Indians which were dying out very quickly. He found that the traditional grammatical model could not be used to analyse the structures of those languages. He had to describe them as they were used.

Contribution of Edward Sapir （萨丕尔） He found that although American Indians’ languages had no written forms and were regarded as primitive, they were virtually very systematic and were very efficient in communications with their communities.

Contribution of Leonard Bloomfield （布龙菲尔德） He is regarded as the father of American structuralism. His book Language (1933) became the bible of linguistics and remained unsurpassed as an introduction to linguistics after more than 3 decades.

Influence of behaviorism Bloomfield agreed with the views of the psychologist John B Watson that only things that could be observed publicly and objectively could be studied scientifically. So he held the position that if linguistics was going to be as science, it should only admit data that could be objectively verified. He characterized language and language acquisition in terms of behaviorist terminology.

Main features of structuralism 1. Linguists should describe instead of prescribe what people actually say and should take an inductive approach in analysing data. 2.A language was a habit of verbal behavior which consisted of a series of stimuli and responses 3. Speech was primary and writing was secondary because writing was a later development to represent speech. 4. Each language had a unique system of its own and it was wrong to fit it into the established grammatical patterns of Greek.

Behaviorism Origin of behaviorism Principles of behaviorism Contribution of B.F.Skinner Classical conditioning and operant conditioning

Origin of behaviorism In1913, the American psychologist John B. Watson 华生 ( ) published an article entitled “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It” which was regarded as a formal introduction to behaviorism in the psychological world

Principles of behaviorism Any consideration of animal’s mental events such as knowledge, perception and decisions only made the explanation of predictable behaviour more complex and confusing, because we had no direct way to observe the animal’s mind. What we could observe publicly was the animal’ behaviour and the external environmental conditions. The appropriate goal of psychology set out in his article was to understand the environmental conditions that would cause an animal to behave in a particular way.

Contribution of B.F.Skinner B. F. Skinner(1904—1990) was regarded as the leader of behaviorism. New kind of apparatus for studying learning in animals and a new way of describing the learning process. Further development and modifications of Watson’s learning theory

Classical conditioning and operant conditioning One kind of learning processes is now called classical conditioning, by which a stimulus that did not elicit a response comes to elicit a response after it is paired several times with a stimulus that already elicit a response. The other kind of learning processes is now labelled as operant conditioning by which the occurrence of a response will be determined by the consequences of the response.

The habit-formation theory Acquisition of language Function of imitation and practice Positive transfer Negative transfer Attitude towards error Function of contrastive analysis

Acquisition of language The process of second language acquisition is regarded as a process of habit formation.

Function of imitation and practice Imitation and practice play an important role in the process of habit- formation, because the behaviorists maintained that imitation will help learners identify the associations between stimuli and responses while practice will reinforce the associations and help learners to form the new linguistic habits.

Positive transfer If the mother tongue and the target language have the same linguistic habits, then positive transfers will occur and the target language learning process will be facilitated.

Negative transfer When the mother tongue and the target language share a meaning but express it in different ways, the learner will transfer the ways of expression in the mother tongue to the target language. This is called negative transfer and the results of such transfers are realized by errors made by the learner.

Attitude towards error Errors should be avoided and should be corrected if they have been made, because they are indication of non-learning and have the danger of becoming bad linguistic habits.

Function of contrastive analysis If a careful and detailed comparison between the mother tongue and the target language is done, then all the errors in second language learning process can be predicted and avoided