Audiolingualism: Background

 Although the Audiolingual Method is nowadays closely associated with Skinner and Behavorism, some people claim this is an oversimplification of its actual history, since Audiolingualism actually began before Skinner’s theories were widely in vogue.  (see The myth of neat histories).   Audiolingualism was actually primarily developed in the University of Michigan by Charles Fries, drawing on a number of practices that were common at the time (although Skinner’s theories were later used as theoretical justifications for the method after it was already created.)  

The Audiolingual method was used by the U.S. army during World War II.  In the context of the U.S. army, the audiolingual method was a great success, although it is not entirely clear why it was a great success.  Krashen and Terrell say that, as the method was implemented in the U.S. army, it actually consisted of two parts--the first part was one in which dialogues were drilled in the classroom, the second part consisted of a conversation with a native speaker about real life topics.  Krashen and Terrell attribute the success of the audiolingual approach to the conversation part, not the drilling part (see The Natural Approach).

In response to the great success audiolingualism had shown in the U.S. army, it was implemented in secondary schools across the United States in the 1950s and 1960s.  However, it did not achieve the same success in U.S. high schools that it did in the U.S. Army.  

Krashen and Terrell believe that this was because everyone remembered the drilling element, but forgot about the conversation with the native speaker element.  

A different view is offered by Lightbown and Spada, who believe that audiolingualism method worked in the army because the army consisted of a group of highly motivated adult learners.  They believe that audiolingualism fell apart in the high school setting because of the lower motivation of high school students.   (see How Languages are Learned).

When the audiolingual method failed to provide the same success in high schools as it did in the U.S. army, educators began to look for different methods.  At around time, the theoretical underpinnings of audiolingualism began to fall out of favor as behaviorism fell out of favor thanks, in part, to Chomsky’s criticism of Skinner.

[Note: This was a small section I wrote for a larger group paper, but since I summarizes the reading I've done on audiolingualism over the past few years (see links to sources), I thought I would save it here.]