Glossary audiolingual teaching

GLOSSARY
Audiolingual teaching combined a learning theory based on ideas of habit-formation, and practice with a view of language as patterns and structures; it chiefly made students repeat sentences recorded on tape and practice structures in repetitive drills. Originating in the USA in the 1940s, its peak of popularity was probably the 1960s, though it was not much used in British-influenced EFL. (Note it is not usually abbreviated to ALM since these initials belong to a particular trade‑marked method).
Audiovisual teaching presented visual images to show the meaning of spoken dialogues and believed in treating language as a whole rather than divided up into different aspects. Teaching relied on film-strips and taped dialogues for repetition. It emerged chiefly in France in the 1960s and 1970s and was highly influential in modern language teaching in England

Audio-lingual.The audio-lingual method focussed on drilling key language structures orally. It was popular in the 1950s and 1960s, and derived from the behaviourist belief that repetition helped form habits. Although it has since been shown that repetition is not key to learning language, the method continues to be used by some teachers, often as a part of PPP (Presentation, Practice, Production).

Acquisition. The way in which languages are learnt unconsciously or ‘picked up’ by exposure to comprehensible input. In this definition, the term acquisition is used in contrast to learning, which is seen as a deliberate and conscious process of rule learning and self-monitoring of language use. However the terms acquisition and learning are used interchangeably by some writers.

Approach. An approach to language teaching is the set of beliefs on which that teaching is based. The beliefs cover what language is, how it is used and learnt. From these beliefs a set of teaching practices are built. The terms method and approach are sometimes used interchangeably, with approach being used nowadays more commonly than method, perhaps because it implies a less rigid set of teaching practices than method, e.g. The Lexical Approach v the Direct Method.