کتاب A Comparative Study on the Effect of Natural and Audio-lingual based Instructions on Iranian EFL Young Learners’ English Proficiency

Table of Contents
Title page
Introduction 11
CHAPTER ONE 17
The Audiolingual Method 17
The General Concepts of the Audiolingual Method 17
The Principles Underlying the Audio-lingual Method 18
Theory of Language 18
Theory of Learning 19
Techniques used in the Audiolingual Method 19
Studies done on ALM 21
CHAPTER TWO 25
The Natural Approach 25
The General Concepts of the Natural Approach 25
The Principles Underlying Natural Approach 26
Theory of Language 26
Theory of Learning 27
Criticisms to Krashen’ Theory 32
Techniques used in Natural Approach 36
CHAPTER THREE 39
The role of motivation in language learning 39
Vocabulary Learning 41
CHAPTER FOUR 43
Communicative Competence and Communicative Language Teaching 43
Hymes’ concept of communicative competence 43
Widdowson’s concept of communicative language teaching 44
Theoretical framework of communicative competence 45
Applications of the concept of communicative competence to language teaching 47
CHAPTER FIVE 49
Methodology 49
The study 49
CHAPTER SIX 59
Data Analysis and Results 59
The effect of method on vocabulary acquisition 59
The effect of method on communication skills 61
The effect of method on young learners’ motivation in learning 61
The English teachers’ ideas toward each method 65
The parents’ ideas toward each method 68
The head teachers’ ideas toward each method 70
CHAPTER SEVEN 75
Discussion, Implication, and Conclusion 75
Summary of findings 75
Research hypotheses and discussion 75
REFERENCES 85

The Audiolingual Method
The General Concepts of the Audiolingual Method
The Audio-lingual Method, also known as the aural oral, Functional skills, new key or American method of language teaching was considered a “scientific” approach in language teaching. Brown (1994) explains that this method was one of the first to have its roots ”firmly grounded in linguistics and psychological theory”, which apparently added to its credibility and probably had some influence in the popularity it enjoyed over a long period of time. It also had a major influence on the language teaching methods that were to follow and can still be seen in major or minor manifestations of language teaching methodology even to this day.
According to Brown (1994) “another factor that accounted for the method’s popularity was the quick success it achieved in leading learners towards communicative competence. Through extensive mimicry, memorization and over-learning of language patterns and forms, students and teachers were often able to see immediate results”. Just as the Direct Method that preceded it, the overall goal of the Audiolingual Method was to create communicative competence in learners. However, it was thought that the most effective way to do this was for students to “over learn” the language being studied through extensive repetition and a variety of elaborate drills. The idea was to project the linguistics patterns of the language into the minds of the learners in a way that made responses automatic and “habitual”. To this end, it was held that the language “habits” of the first language would constantly interfere, and the only way to overcome those problems was to facilitate the learning of a new set of “habits” appropriate linguistically to the language being studied.

It can be concluded that Audiolingual method is a kind of method for teaching language through dialogues which focuses on the students’ habit formation by repetition, memorizing grammatical structures through substitutions, singular-plural and tense transformations, etc, using the target language and the culture where the language is spoken.

The Principles Underlying the Audio-lingual Method
Theory of Language
The theory of language underlying Audiolingualism was derived from a view proposed by American linguists in the 1950s, a view that came to be known as structural linguistics. Richards and Rodgers (2001) bring some characteristics of structural linguistics as follow:
a) Elements in a language were thought of as being linearly produced in a rule-governed (structured) way;
b) Language samples could be exhaustively described at any structural level of description (phonetic, phonemic morphological, etc);
c) Linguistic levels were thought of as systems within systems – that is, as being pyramidally structured; phonemic systems led to morphemic systems, and these in turn led to the higher-level systems of phrases, clauses, and sentences. Learning a language was, it was assumed, entails mastering the elements or building blocks of the language and learning the rules by which these elements are combined, from phoneme to morpheme to word to phrase to sentence.

An important tenet of structural linguistics was that the primary medium of language is oral. It was argued that language is primarily what is spoken and only secondarily what is written. Therefore, speech was the most important element in language teaching. In 1961 the American linguist William Moulton proclaimed the linguistic principles on which language teaching methodology should be based: “Language is speech, not writing….A language is a set of habits….Teach the language, not about the language….A language is what its native speakers say, not what someone thinks they ought to say….Languages are different”.

Theory of Learning
The theory of learning underlying Audiolingualism comes from behavioral psychology. According to Behaviorism, there are three crucial elements in learning:
(i) a stimulus, which serves to elicit behavior
(ii) a response, which is triggered by a stimulus
(iii) reinforcement, which serves to mark the response as being appropriate (or inappropriate) and encourages the repetition (or suppression) of the response in the future.

Based on the behavioral psychology, a number of learning principles emerged:
1. Foreign language learning is basically a process of mechanical habit formation. Good habits are formed by giving correct responses rather than by making mistakes. By memorizing dialogues and performing pattern drills the chances of producing mistakes are minimized. Language is verbal behavior-that is, the automatic production and comprehension of utterances-and can be learned by inducing the students to do likewise.
2. Language skills are learned more effectively if the items to be learned in the target language are presented in spoken form before they are seen in written form. Aural-oral training is needed to provide the foundation for the development of other language skills.
3. Analogy provides a better foundation for language learning than analysis. Analogy involves the processes of generalization and discrimination. Explanations of rules are therefore not given until students have practiced a pattern in a variety of contexts and are thought to have acquired a perception of the analogies involved. Drills can enable learners to form correct analogies. Hence the approach to the teaching of grammar is essentially inductive rather than deductive.
4. The meanings that the words of a language have for the native speaker can be learned only in a linguistic and cultural context and not in isolation. Teaching a language thus involves teaching aspects of a cultural system of the people who speak the language.

Techniques used in the Audiolingual Method
There have been many arguments about the emphasis on or the importance of the subject matter and the importance of the method. Some methods have been applied to the teaching of English in the effort improving the result, such as the Direct Method, the Total Physical Response Method and Audiolingual Method.

Anggraeni (2007) states that “drills as part of the Audiolingual method have been applied to the teaching of English especially in speaking. In this case, teaching English as a foreign language makes teachers and students try to use English as a means of communication and therefore, the better these communications happen, the better our students will master English. In reaching the goal of teaching speaking, the use of an appropriate method is keenly needed”.

According to Nagaraj (1998):
Language was introduced through dialogues which contained common structures used in everyday communication as well as useful vocabulary. The dialogues were memorized line by line. Learners mimicked the teacher or a tape, listening carefully to all the features of the spoken target language. Native speaker- like pronunciation was important in presenting the model. Phrases and sentences of a dialogue were taught through repetition, first by the whole class, then smaller groups and finally individual learners. To consolidate what was learnt, the dialogue was adapted and personalized by application to the learner’s own situation. These drills were practiced orally, first in chorus and later individually. Some generalizations (not rules) were given to advanced learners about the structures they had practiced.

Larsen-Freeman (2000) provides expanded descriptions of some common or typical techniques closely associated with the Audiolingual Method as follow:
(1) Dialogue memorization
Students memorize an opening dialogue using mimicry; Then, they role play the new dialogue in pairs, in groups or with the teacher. Certain sentence patterns and grammar points are included within the dialogue which is later practiced in drills.
(2) Backward Build-up (expansion) drill
Teacher breaks a line into several parts; students repeat each part starting at the end of the sentence and “expanding” backwards through the sentence, adding each part in sequence.
(3) Repetition drill
Students repeat teacher’s model as quickly and accurately as possible.
(4) Chain drill
Students ask and answer each other one by one in a circular chain around the classroom.
(5) Single-slot Substitution drill
Teacher states a line from the dialogue, and then uses a word or phrase as a “cue” that students, when repeating the line, must substitute into the sentence in the correct place.
(6) Multiple-slot Substitution drill
Like the single slot drill except that there are multiple cues to be substituted into the line.
(7) Transformation drill
Teacher provides a sentence that must be turned into something else, for example a question to be turned into a statement, an active sentence to be turned into negative statement, etc.
(8) Question and Answer drill
Students should answer or ask questions very quickly.
(9) Use Minimal Pairs
Analysis, teacher selects a pair of words that sound identical except for a single sound that typically poses difficulty for the learners-students are to pronounce and differentiate the two words.
(10) Complete the dialogue
Selected words are erased from a line in the dialogue-students must find and insert.
(11) Grammar games
Various games designed to practice a grammar point in context, using lots of repetitions.

Studies done on ALM
In a research conducted by Anggraeni (2007), Audiolingual method was considered as an alternative method in teaching speaking. The study concluded that the speaking mastery achieved by the first year students of junior high school improved after they were taught via Audio-Lingual Teaching Method. The researcher therefore suggests that the Audio-Lingual Teaching Method is one of the effective methods to increase students’ enthusiasm in learning English.
The role of repetition in learning a language is emphasized in many studies, especially regarding child language learning. “Child discourse at the early stages of language acquisition is extraordinarily repetitive in nature. Children often repeat a large number of utterances addressed to them (other-repetition); they also often repeat their own utterances (self-repetition). The role of repetition in language acquisition has been much-discussed in psychology, linguistics, and anthropology”.
Studies on other-repetition (often referred to as ‘imitation’) have mostly been concerned with its role in the learning of vocabulary and syntax. The results, however, have been inconsistent. A number of studies have concluded that imitation plays no role or only a limited role in linguistic development. Other studies, however, have reported that imitation facilitates grammatical and lexical development.
Stine and Bohannon (1983) investigated the imitations of a child interacting with adults. The data were collected when the child was at ages 2;8 and 3;0. Eight percent of the child’s utterances were imitative at age 2;8 and 6% at 3;0. To test the progressive function of imitation, the authors examined whether the use of imitations promoted the use of more complex utterances. By comparing the mean length of utterance (MLU) of the child’s imitated utterances with the child’s overall MLU, it was found that the child’s imitations did not appear to be more complex than his spontaneous speech.
Tager-Flusberg and Calkins (1990) studied the role of imitation in the acquisition of grammar by examining speech data of autistic, Down’s syndrome, and normal children. The data consisted of four samples of naturalistic mother– child speech taken over the course of 1 year from four autistic, four Down’s syndrome, and four normal children. Using MLU and the Index of Productive Syntax, the authors compared imitative and spontaneous utterances in the children’s speech corpora. It was found that across all the three groups of children, spontaneous speech utterances were longer, and contained more advanced grammatical constructions than did the imitative utterances. The authors thus suggested that imitation did not facilitate grammatical development.
In contrast with Stine and Bohannon (1983) and Tager-Flusberg and Calkins (1990), Corrigan (1980) reported that when a non-exact copy definition of imitation was utilized, imitation played a significant role in the acquisition of new lexical and semantic–syntactic relations. In the study, the authors examined 1-year longitudinal speech data of three children (9, 10, and 11 months of age at the beginning of the study). Various types of imitations were analyzed, including exact repetition and non- exact repetition such as repetition with expansion. Using a broader definition of imitation, the study demonstrated that the children used repetition to facilitate their first use of new syntactic–semantic relations.
Snow (1981) also analyzed various kinds of imitations in child language, including exact imitation, reduced imitations, and expanded imitations. The child subject was recorded at the ages of 2;3, 2;5, and 2;7. The results showed that while the child’s tendency to produce reduced imitations declined as his age and MLU increased, exact imitations increased as a proportion of the imitations. The most striking and important developmental change observed was the increase in the production of expanded imitations. It was found that the child used expanded imitations to develop his control of structures such as complex NPs, answers to wh-questions, and expressions of desire.

Another study that also reported the facilitative role of imitations is Pe´rez-Pereira (1994). The subjects of the study were two twin sisters. One of the children was blind while the other had normal vision. The children were recorded once a month from 2;5 to 3;5. The children’s imitations, repetitions, and routines (IRR speech) were analyzed in comparison with their productive utterances. The results showed that MLU for IRR speech was greater than that for productive utterances. It appeared that IRR speech facilitated language development. In addition, it was found that the blind girl used routines and modified imitations and repetitions more frequently than her sighted sister, and that her use of modified repetitions increased during the study.
As seen above, previous studies have reported contradictory results concerning the role of imitation in language growth. It appears that the contradiction may largely result from methodological differences among the studies, as suggested by Pe´rez-Pereira (1994). That is, different studies have used different definitions of imitation. Some studies adopted a narrower definition of imitation and considered only exact and reduced imitations while others adopted a broader definition and included modified and expanded repetitions as imitations. Studies which analyzed only exact and reduced imitations tended to conclude that imitations do not further linguistic development while the majority of studies that analyzed modified and expanded imitations supported the claim that imitations promote grammatical development.
In his influential study, Hebb (1961) presented participants with 24 lists of nine digits each and measured the impact of the regular repetition of a sequence on immediate serial recall. Unknown to participants, a sequence was repeated every third trial, resulting in eight repetitions of that sequence while all other sequences were non- repeating. Performance improved with repetition relative to performance on the filler trials. This ‘learning through repetition’ effect is well established (e.g., Cumming, Page, & Norris, 2003; Hitch, Fastame, & Flude, 2005;) and, importantly, has been shown irrespective of whether participants become aware of the repetition or not (Couture & Tremblay, 2006; Hebb, 1961; McKelvie, 1987).
At the end, it is worth mentioning that the popularity of Audiolingual method did not last for a long time “because of its failure to teach long-term communicative proficiency. It was discovered later that language was not acquired through a process of habit-formation and over learning and it is not necessary to avoid errors at all costs”.