Audio-Lingual Method: Teaching Foreign Languages
Audio-Lingual Method (ALM)
The Audio-Lingual Method (ALM) is a method for teaching foreign languages that emphasizes listening and speaking before reading and writing. Students listen and repeat what the teacher says. The general goal of the ALM is to enable communication in the target language. Short-range objectives include training in listening comprehension and accurate pronunciation. Long-range objectives, or the ultimate goal, is to develop the student’s abilities to be the same as native speakers, to use it automatically without stopping to think. We like this method, but the process of learning only focuses on speaking.
Listening Comprehension Skill
Listening comprehension skill is the first ability that we put into practice when we learn a language. This skill is specially developed during the silent period. In that period, teachers can speak in the target language and try to make the gist understandable through pictures, body language, intonation, gestures, and so on. If the teachers want to make sure that students have understood the gist, they can use some methods to check their understanding during the silent period, for example, they can use the Total Physical Response method as students only have to respond physically. Extensive listening means that students listen to a large amount of information and they have to understand the gist, also called skimming listening. Whereas, intensive listening means that students have to get some specific or detailed information. This information is got by scanning listening. An important strategy that the teacher should teach is intelligent guess-work. Some important listening strategies include: predicting-before learners listen to something, and working out the meaning context.
Introducing Children to Reading
Children can start to read in the foreign language in an unconscious way, especially those words that they are familiar with. This can happen if the teacher uses routine word flashcards with pictures and their corresponding names underneath. The teacher shows children some flashcards and makes students look at the pictures and their names carefully. Once students have retained the flashcards in their minds, the teacher pronounces the name of the picture. In that way, the teacher works on the student’s visual, auditory, and kinesthetic attention.
Teaching Children to Write in English
They need to know how to spell words, the names of the letters that a word contains, because this can help students to retain the correct written form of words in their brains and look up words in a dictionary. Copying, tracing, and making letter shapes are ways to practice handwriting in English. Children should enjoy doing handwriting activities in the foreign languages because it means that they feel motivated to play with the foreign letters and feel eager for beginning writing in the foreign language. Children can practice letter shapes by: tracing over dot letters, using letters cut out of rough paper and stuck on cards, tracing the shape in the air-air writing, palm writing game, and so on.
Mistakes in Language Learning
Most people agree that making mistakes is a part of learning. Also, most people agree that correction is a part of teaching. If we agree, first of all, as teachers we can learn that we should not rush into correction before we know what someone wants to mean. Slips, errors, and attempts. If the teacher thinks that a student could self-correct a mistake, we shall call this type of mistake a slip. If a student cannot self-correct a mistake in his or her own English, but the teacher thinks that the class is familiar with the correction form, we shall call this sort of mistake an error. Finally, when the teacher knows that the students have not yet learned the language necessary to express what they want to say, we can call their mistake attempts. We should correct by following these advices: give a chance for self-correction and, if possible, use peer correction rather than direct teacher correction. However the correction is done, ask the student who first made the mistake to repeat the correct utterance. If it is a short dialogue let students finish the whole thing before you give feedback. Teachers can use delayed correction when the students work in pairs or in groups. The teacher walks around the class quickly to make sure that all the students are working properly. When a teacher finds that no one in the class can correct a particular mistake, he must realize that this point has not yet been generally learned.