Short Essay Second Language Acquisition What killed Audiolingualism

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Short Essay Second Language Acquisition

What killed audiolingualism

By

DEDI GUNAWAN

E1D010045

UNIVERSITY OF MATARAM

THE FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

2014

Introduction

Audio-lingual method one of method in language teaching, where there are around eight method such as direct method, the silent way, suggestopedia, community language learning, the total physical response, and the last communicative approach. In each method has weakness and strength, there is no perfection in all of those method. If someone says the silent way is the best method to apply in teaching language learning, absolutely she or he is wrong.

            The audio-lingual method is based on the behaviorist belief that language learning is the acquisition of a set of correct language habits. The learners or students repeat patterns until able to produce word fluently or good. The teacher direct and control student behavior, provides a model and reinforces correct responses. Drilling is central activity in this method. In this method the role of teacher is very essential. The teacher direct and control student behavior, provides a model and reinforces correct responses. The ALM uses some specific task to teach language such as imitation (repeat the word). Memorization (memorize the structure of sentence) and substitution (replace a word with another one). The audio-lingual method teaches the language directly but doesn’t use the native language to explain words or grammar.

Discussion

            After we are flashback material about the audio-lingual method, now we focus on the main problem in this paper, which is “The audio-lingual method was widely used in the United States and other countries in the 1950's and 1960's, it no longer is. Why? “

As we know The Audio-Lingual Method was widely spread all American colleges and universities and reached its height of success in the mid-fifties. But in the1960s many linguists criticized Audiolingualism, claiming that the theoretical foundation of this approach is weak and students were found to be unable to use skills learned in the classroom in real communication (Richards & Rodgers, 1987). In here student faces difficult situation if they want to apply what they have got it from teacher. Because what the student learn in class different in daily communication in real life. There is limitation in teaching English classroom. The teacher has restriction what the material will give it to student. And student complete the task in ALM method because they have to do that not because they are interested in learning to teacher.  James lee and Bill Van Patten said” what ALM instruct did not usually provide was the opportunity for students to use language in a meaningful or communicative way, one involving the exchange of message. Nothing that happened in ALM classroom could be constructed as exchange of information because output (the actual production of language) was severely restricted. In fact, many thought that student did not need to know what they are saying; they need to know only that what they were saying was correct. The ALM does not let student create a meaningful environment to learn the topic or structures that are going to be presented to them. The exercises in ALM do not represent real facts in life or make student interested.  Like writer said before ALM has technique such as repetition, substitution and memorization where student do not permit to interact with their peers; the students have to follow a pattern written on the board. In real life of students, experience or interest are not important to teach them the English class. The students can not react in front of real situations such as giving some directions or talking with a foreigner when they meet. In ALM is not concern or focus if students understand the structure or meaning sentence. The ALM just focuses on how well or bad student can follow a structure and repeat it with pronoun and showing they are capable to substitute some word inside a sentence. The material in ALM has bad effect in interaction real life because the content of materials just repeat and change one word for other. And in ALM student is not demanded to know the meaning of words. It is make student never learn what the function word. Conversely the purpose of learning language is to communicate ideas or feelings to someone who speak English language. Students are going to use it at some time in their live and they are not always sitting in classroom.

And in ALM has different habit information/pattern LI 1 and LI 2, so the learner will learn again habit pattern in LI 1 to produce grammatical pattern correctly.  But in other hand ALM just do repetition, ignore learn grammatical pattern toward LI 1. It is lack of ALM.

Audiolingualism (ALM) theory of learning and teaching languages was based on behaviorist theory that, where according to Chomsky (1966), could not function as a model of how humans learn languages. Chomsky introduced an alternative theory of language learning, explaining that languages or sentence are not acquired by repetition and imitation, but “generated from the learner’s base competence” (Richards & Rodgers, 1987). With the appearance of Chomsky’s transformational grammar theory, where this theory said that the fundamental properties of language derive from innate aspects of the mind and from how humans process experience through language. His theories were to revolutionize American linguistic and focus the attention of linguistic and psychologists on the mental properties people bring to bear on language used and language learning. That is make Audiolingualism lost its popularity in the American language teaching system. (Richards & Rodgers, 1987).

Conclusion

Although this method has been discredited it is still sometimes used by ESL teachers around the world especially in Indonesia. Some teachers like to use because this method it is easy to apply in class and both the students and teacher know what to expect (goals). It can be useful sometimes to drill the students with sentences, but should not always be used as the only method of teaching learning. And the teacher can combine audio-lingual method to one another so will be create the effectiveness in teaching learning process.