The audio-lingual method is a teacher-centric approach. The teacher controls interaction in the target language and directs classroom language learning drills and other activities. The typical instructional procedure in the audio-lingual method begins with students listening to the teacher modeling a dialogue. Students repeat each line of the dialogue after the teacher. Certain key words or phrases may be changed in the dialogue.
Key structures from the dialogue are the basis for pattern drills of different kinds that follow. Students expand on the elements in the dialogue through substitutions in the pattern drills, which are organized in a particular sequence to lead students from simple repetition to more complex manipulations of language forms and structures.
Typical drills beyond the repetition drill include backward buildup drill, chain drill, single-slot substitution drill, multipleslot substitution drill, transformation drill, question-andanswer drill, and minimal pairs. The backward buildup drill helps students learn accurate placement of sentence stress and pitch patterns by starting from the end of an utterance and gradually building up to the beginning of the utterance.
In a chain drill, the teacher asks one student a question, and after the student answers the question, he or she asks it of another student in the class. The drill continues until everyone has answered and asked the question. Single-slot substitution drills present students with a model sentence from the dialogue and cue words that students substitute into the dialogue line. Multiple-slot substitution drills supply more than one cue word to substitute in the sentence.
In a transformation drill, students transform model sentences from one form to another (for example, from affirmative to negative, from active to passive, or from statement to question). In a minimal-pairs drill, students distinguish between words that differ from each other by only one sound. By drilling the difference, it is thought that students will improve their perception of the distinction and, consequently, their pronunciation.
