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2.3.3 The main characteristics ofthe OralApproach

1.    Language teaching begins with the spoken language. Materiał is taught orally before it is presented in written form.

2.    The target language is the language of the classroom.

3.    New language points are introduced and practised situational.

4.    Vocabulary selection procedures are followed to ensure that an essential generał service vocabulary is covered.

5.    Items of grammar are graded foliowing the principle that simple forms should be taught before complex ones.

6.    Reading and writing are introduced once a sufficient lexical and grammatical basis is established.

The Orał Approach or the Situational Language Teaching is a language teaching method developed by British language teaching specialists between 1940 and 1960. It is a grammar-based method in which principles of grammatical and lexical gradation are used and new teaching points presented and practised through situations. Techniąues derived from Situational Language Teaching are found in many widely used language teaching textbooks. (Richards 1992:336)

2.4. The Audiolingual Method 2.4.1. Background

As the Orał approach and the Situational language teaching are closely conneęted with British methodologists (Palmer, Hornby), the Audiolingual method hąs an American background.

The World War II brought with it in the US the realisation that military personnel who would be serving overseas could not Understand or speak any foreign language. The need to teach orał profieiency in the languagęs of both the US allies and enemies. The US military provided funding for special, intensive language courses that focused on the aural/oral skills. These courses came to be known as the Army Method introduced as an immediate remedy for the situation. Characteristic of these courses was a great deal of orał activity - pronunciation and pattem drills and conversation practice - without grammar or translation found in traditional classes. Numerous features of the Direct method were borrowed and incorporated into this new approach. Soon the success of the Army method and the revived interest in foreign languagęs forced educational institutions to adopt the new methodology. '

The work of Leonard Bloomfield in linguistics, Edward Sapir in cultural anthropology, and B.F.Skinner in psychology were used as the theoretical basis for materials preparation. Thus, structuralism, behaviouristic psychology, and the Audiolingual Method dominated America until about 1960, when the first complains were voiced aloud.

Structural linguists of the 1940s and 1950s were engaged in a scientific descriptive analysis of various languagęs. Teaching methodologists saw a direct application of such analysis to teaching linguistic pattems. At the same time, behaviouristic psychologists advocated conditioning and habit-formation models of learning.

One of the main principles of audiolingualism was that language learning should be viewed as the acąuisition of new forms of behaviour which had to become automatic habits. Language training was thus seen as a means of developing these habits in the learner. As a result, much emphasis was laid on habit formation and automatic control in which problem solving played little or no part. Language learning was understood as teaching of the language, not teaching about the language. Therefore, repetition, imitation (mimicry), memorisation, and pattem practice in the classroom or the language were encouraged. Many pattem drills were designed in such a way that seąuences of sftiall items could be practised successfully without involving techniąues of slow problem solving. The audiolinguists believed that in this way language learning could be madę morę active, less intellectual, morę practical, and morę accessible to ordinary leamers. The audiolingual theory did not rely entirely on the implicit principle. If grammar was first presented through the drilling of structures, the process was completed by the

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