History of approaches to ELT
The audio-lingual approach
• The audio-lingual approach dominated foreign language teaching in the 1950s and 1960s.
• Its rise is partly due to the fact that because of the rapid increase of international trade, travel, and commerce, ever more people needed to learn English (the new lingua franca). That includes ‘intellectually less gifted’ people.
• The major aim is to enable all learners to use English in everyday oral communication. Speaking is put before and above writing.
• The claim is that by the imitation of good examples and the fast correction of errors everyone can learn a second language. There is no need for abstract rule knowledge. (“Englisch für alle”, 1964).
• Pattern drills and the use of the language laboratory are typical of the teaching methods used under the audio-lingual approach.
The theoretical background to the audio-lingual approach
• Behaviouristic theories of learning, paired with a linguistic approach that takes an interest in the surface structures of language only, form the scientific background of the audio-lingual approach.
• The radical behaviourist position is that people are like animals and learn ‘things’ by trial-and-error and/or the imitation of what others say/do, not by a creative (cognitive) construction of phrases.
• Behaviourists claim that all learning rests on an association which is formed between a stimulus and a response (S-R theories). Famous experiments to prove that are Pavlov’s experiments with dogs, and Thorndike’s experiments with pigeons and rats in mazes.
• If learning rests on imitation then teachers must use English only in class. And their English must be good (correct) English.
• Behaviourists claim to have discovered ‘laws of learning’.
Behaviourism and ‘laws of learning’
