Prior to the evolvement of the audio-lingual approach, some leaders in the field of second-language teaching had advocated mimicry-memorization of set phrases as the basis for language acquisition activities. Others had preferred practice of structure as the fundamental component of language instruction. The audio-lingual approach that grew out of behavioristic psychology and descriptive linguistics is a combination of these two techniques. Basically, in the audio-lingual approach the teacher and/or the tape recorder act as external agents to connect certain linguistic responses to selected language stimuli.
The basic tenets of the audio-lingual approach were reflected in the textbooks published, in the manner in which teachers proceeded through the text, and in the types of classroom activities used in audio-lingual teaching. In
the following sections, each of these components of audio-lingual methodology is described.