The Techniques of Audio Lingual Method

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5. The Teaching Simple Past Tense through Audio Lingual Method

The Audio Lingual Method is a language-teaching methodology based heavily on behaviorist theories of learning. These theories suggested that much learning is the result of habit formation. 40 Diane Larsen-Freeman illustrate the sequence of the Audio lingual activities is that the teacher is presenting a new dialog, a conversation between two people. The students know they will be expected to eventually memorize the dialog the teacher is introducing. All of the instructions are in English. After she acts out the dialogue, she asks students to listen carefully the conversation. And here is the example of dialogue containing the Simple Past Tense: Sally : Good morning, Bill. Bill : Good morning, Sally. Sally : How are things? Bill : Fine, thanks. How about you? Sally : Fine. By the way, where did you go last week? Bill : I went to Kuta beach. Sally : did you see a tourist? Bill : Yes, I did. I saw many people who enjoy the beautiful of beach. Sally : could you invite me to go there on next holiday? Bill : Sure. Sally : Thank you, Bill. After the teacher act out the dialog, she has the whole class repeat each lines of her dialog after her model. It repeated after several times. When the class came to the line, “I went to the Beach, “they stumble bit in their repetition. Then the teacher uses backward build-up drill expansion drill. The purpose of this drill is to break down the troublesome sentence into smaller parts. 40 Jeremy Harmer, How to Teach …, p. 29-30 29 After students have repeated the dialog several times, the teacher gives chance to the students to do the role-play. Before the class actually says each line, the teacher models it. In effect, the class is experiencing a repetition drill where the task is to listen carefully and attempt to mimic the teacher‟s model as accurately as possible. After that, the teacher initiates a chain drill with four of the lines from the dialogue. A chain drill gives students an opportunity to say the lines individually. It is also lets students use the expressions in communication with someone else, event though it‟s very limited. Finally, the teacher points two students to perform the entire for the rest of the class. Then the teacher led a single slot substitution drill. She changes “the Beach” into another one phase like “the Zoo”, “the mountain”, the temple”, and so on by showing the picture. Instead the teacher simply shows the pictures one at a time, and the student‟s repeat entire sentence putting the name of the place in the picture in the appropriate slot in the sentence. Finally, the teacher increases the complexity of the task by leading the students in multi-slot substitution drill. However with this drill, students must recognize what part of speech the cue word is and where it fits into the sentence. The substitution drills are followed by transformation drill. The students asked to change one type of sentence into another, an affirmative into negative sentence, active into passive sentence. For example, the teacher said: “I say, „He went to the beach” then the students make a question by sa ying, “Did he go to the beach?” Through her actions and examples, the students have learned that they are to answer the questions following the patter she has modeled. Then the students are asked to answer the teacher‟s questions by looking the certain picture. 30 At the final few minutes of the class, the teacher returns to the dialogue with which the teacher began the lesson. In the next meeting, the teacher will review the dialogue, expand upon the dialogue by adding a few more lines, drill the new lines, work on the different grammar rules, use minimal-pair words, do writing, do game, and present an interesting topic. 41

6. The Steps of Teaching Simple Past Tense through Audio Lingual

Method in the Classroom 1. The teacher presents a new dialogue, a conversation between two people and acts it out. 2. The teacher asks the students to repeat the dialogue for several times 3. The teacher gives chance to the students to do the role-play 4. The teacher initiates a chain drills 5. Then the teacher led a single slot substitution drill 6. The teacher increases the complexity of the task by leading the students in multi-slot substitution drill.

D. Grammar Translation Method

1. The Understanding of Grammar Translation Method

The Grammar Translation Method of foreign language teaching is one of the most traditional methods. It was called classical method since it was originally used to teach Latin and Greek. The Grammar Translation Method was the principal method in Europe in the 19th century. It was based on teaching grammar structures and vocabulary with direct translations. Little attention was paid to interpersonal communication or pronunciation. Earlier in this century, it was used for the purpose of helping students read and appreciate foreign language literature. It was hoped that, through the study of the grammar of the target language, student would 41 Diane Larsen-Freeman, Teac hing and Principles in Language…, p.32- 37.