Teach english new edition r

structural-situational 
teaching, grammatical 
structures were presented in simple situations which exemplified their usage. Crucially, 
too, the structures were carefully graded so that students learnt the easy ones first before 
moving onto things that were more complex.
Audio-lingualism 
marries this emphasis on grammatical patterns with 
behaviourist
theories of learning. These theories suggested that m uch learning is the result of habit- 
form ation, where performing the correct 
response 
to a 
stimulus 
means that a 
reward 
is 
given; constant repetition of this reward makes the response automatic. This procedure is 
referred to as 
conditioning. 
In effect, audio-lingual classes made extensive use of drilling, 
in which students produced the same grammatical pattern but were prom pted to use 
different words within the pattern, in the hope that they would acquire good language 
habits. By rewarding correct production during these repetition phases, students could 
be conditioned into learning the language. Early language laboratory tapes used this 
procedure with students spending hours wearing headphones and responding to prom pts 
or cues in so-called 
cue-response drills. 
It was only later that people realised all the other 
uses to which laboratories could be put (such as exposing students to a variety of listening 
materials), and the laboratory drill ‘regime’ went out of fashion.
Audio-lingualism (and behaviourism) lost popularity because comm entators argued 
that language learning was far more subtle than just the form ation of habits. For example, 
students are quickly able to produce their own combinations of words, whether or not 
they have heard them before. This is because all hum ans have the power to be creative in 
language, basing what they say on the underlying knowledge they have acquired, including 
rules of construction and a knowledge of when a certain kind or form of language is 
appropriate. Methodologists were also concerned that in Audio-lingualism students were 
not exposed to real or realistic language, and were therefore unlikely to produce natural- 
sounding language themselves.
However, it is interesting to note that 
drilling 
(choral and individual repetition and 
cue-response drilling - see Chapter 6, especially) is still considered a useful technique to 
use, especially with low-level students.
PPP
Both Audio-lingualism and its assimilation into structural-situationalism have their 
m odern equivalent in the procedure which is often referred to as PPP. This stands for
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Chapter 4
Presentation, Practice and Production. In PPP lessons or sequences, the teacher presents 
the context and situation for the language (e.g. describing someone’s holiday plans) and 
both explains and demonstrates the meaning and form of the new language (for example, 
the ‘going to’ future - e.g. ‘He’s going to visit the Hermitage M useum’). The students then 
practise making sentences with ‘going to’ (this is often called