Talk:Audio-lingual method

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The audiolingual method: problems with the entry

There are several major inaccuracies in your entry concerning the audiolingual method. Thus joining it with anything is problematic.

First, your entry associates the audiolingual method with the work at Michigan in the 1950's (actually begun in 1940/41). In fact, the audiolingual method had nothing to do with the philosophy or methodology used at Michigan to teach English in the ELI there. Indeed C. C. Fries himself was opposed to audiolingual methodology. He advocated what he called 'the oral approach' (with 'approach' interpreted as in the article by Edward Anthony 'approach, method and technique'). The oral approach had NOTHING to do philosophically with conditioning nor with Skinnerean psychology.

Second, both the oral approach and the audiolingual approach had their beginnings much earlier than the 1950's. Fries always said that he first began to develop his oral approach to teach classical Greek (his first teaching job). The audio lingual method, as I understand it, was an outgrowth of the army teaching materials developed during the second world war. (A number of young linguists were intimately involved with that project.)

It is of interest that none of the references mentioned in the entry were produced by the people involved at the time.

The entry is correct when it speaks of the integration of linguistics and teaching English as a foreign language at Michigan. One of CCF's major emphases was that approaches to practical problems such as teaching foreign languages should be based on the best current knowledge about the nature of language.

I would suggest that you delete all references to Fries and Michigan from the page on the audiolingual method. Then, if you wish to do so, add a separate entry or set of entries concerning Fries, the oral approach etc.

--12.183.38.194 09:40, 6 March 2007 (UTC)Peter H. Fries i think it is very useful information it provided me basis for studies in audion lingaul method —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.27.180.244 (talk) 02:53, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Refernce to Barker, James L.

needs to be fixed. The link is not about that.Ph7five (talk) 21:48, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Would you please help me sorting out the differences between the grammar translation method and the audiolingual method ? I shall be so pleased if you do for I'm in need of help. Thank you in advance Lolly polly (talk) 19:01, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

the grammar translation method and the audiolingual method

What is the difference between the grammar translation method and the audiolingual method? Lolly polly (talk) 19:10, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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Beauty

Voice concern 37.111.135.55 (talk) 23:38, 18 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tenuous link between behaviorism and audiolingualism

While there can be no doubt that audiolingual teachers borrowed the terminology of "reinforcement," no one has been able to demonstrate that Bloomfield or Fries derived their methods from Skinner's radical behaviorism, which is heavily implied in the way the article is currently worded.

Howatt (1984, pp. 267-268) wrote, in his History of English Language Teaching: "The Michigan Oral Approach is often credited with having applied behaviourist psychology to language teaching, but this is a rather doubtful claim. Fries himself, for example, does not mention psychology in the early papers which established the Approach, and Bloomfield's attitude to language learning is strictly commensensical: 'practise everything until it becomes second nature', and 'language learning is overlearning; anything else is of no use'. This sounds rather like behaviourist advice, but in reality, behaviourism was rather more complex. Skinner, for example, aimed to develop new repertoires of behavior by a process he referred to as 'shaping', which became the starting-point of programmed learning in the late fifties and sixties. Simplistic habit formation of the Michigan variety does not need a theory of learning, and none was offered."

As Castagnaro (2006) points out, Rivers' (1964) oft-repeated claim that audiolingualism was grounded in Skinnerian behaviorism was unsupported by the evidence she offered. For one, it is a well-established and agreed-upon fact that Bloomfield and Fries were grounded in a structuralist meta-theory, whereas Skinner pointed to the function of what we commonly call language. For another, Bloomfield and Fries published the first materials on their method before Skinner made his own analysis public, and they never cited Skinners work at that time. Additionally, I myself note in Rivers' account that she often repeats the claim that Skinner does not care what occurs before linguistic behavior, whereas this is demonstrably false. While it wouldn't be until 1982 that Jack Michael would refine the field's terminology, the concepts of discriminative stimuli and motivating operations were there in Science and Human Behavior (Skinner, 1953) and Skinner (1957) repeatedly alludes to these concepts in Verbal Behavior.

There are further problems with this claim. Brooks (1960) and Lado (1964) repeatedly speculate about subjective mental processes that Skinner would have rejected. They make no reference to Skinner's primary verbal operants (mands, tacts, echoics, intraverbals, textuals, or dictation) which form probably 75% of his book, much less to the secondary verbal operant (autoclitic) that Skinner asserted was responsible for much of the structural complexity of language.

Moreover, the current state of the article asserting that Skinnerian behaviorism was "discredited" is highly biased. I'm sure that most of the field of linguistics considered behaviorism pariah after generative grammar came along, but again, Castagnaro (2006) points out the long strides that applied behavior analysis (the actual name of the field; "behaviorism" isn't a theory but a philosophy of science upon which the field of behavior analysis is based) has made in rehabilitating those with developmental disabilities which involve a communicative deficit, such as autism. This is to say nothing of the vast advances in the philosophy, theory, terminology, and practice since 1957, especially after Murray Sidman's (1982) seminal paper on the phenomenon of stimulus equivalence, which even resulted in the formation of a new form of behaviorism (functional contextualism) which itself is responsible for the very effective Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). It is also to say nothing of the work of Edward Taub, who synthesized behavior analysis with behavioral neuroscience to produce one of the most powerful stroke-rehabilitation therapies to date--which includes applications to aphasia. Rphillips-esl (talk) 01:14, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]