On the other side, under the influence of structural approaches to language,
audiolingualism focuses on the material substance of language considering it as a
finite system of rules, ‘…some kind of autonomous mechanism of which the cogs and
pulleys consist of entities called ‘phonemes’, ‘morphemes’, clauses’, ‘sentences’ and
so on.’ (Graddol 1994: 1). The above two views have a number of implications for the
classroom practice as these are referred to immediately below.
The first implication is that audiolingualism, by putting emphasis on the
mechanical repetition of structures (drills) was led to a suggestion for an abstraction
of text from meaning. As Politzer (1961: 19) expresses it, ‘it is entirely possible to
teach the major patterns of a foreign language without letting the student know what
he is saying’. Spratt (1989: 9) gives the following example as representative of such a
mechanical drill, where the teacher (T) initiates a structure and asks students (Ss) to
repeat it several times, using a different verb each time:
T: The man is swimming
Ss: The man is swimming
T: running
Ss: The man is running
T: blimping
Ss: The man is blimping
T: trooling
Ss: The man is trooling
Spratt (ibid) stresses the fact that blimp and trool are nonsense words which serve to
illustrate the point that students can be minimally involved in the meaning of what
they are saying in this kind of drill. However, Widdowson (1983: 39) emphasizes that
‘…a focusing on linguistic forms as such will tend to inhibit the natural use of these
forms for communicative purposes’ and claims (ibid: 36) that linguistic rules are a
means to an end not an end in themselves as their aim is to facilitate communication.
A second implication refers to the content of teaching. As Ellis (1990: 23)
emphasizes, audiolingualism rejected holistic learning approaches in the view that it
was impossible for learners to imitate (and therefore learn) all language items at once.
This, in accordance with the structuralist view of language as a finite system, led
audio-lingual methodologists to the adoption of a synthetic approach to language
teaching which Wilkins (1976: 2) defines as ‘…the one in which the different parts of
language are taught separately and step by step so that acquisition is a process of
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