Delattre was one of the first to report the outcomes of the "aural-oral" approach in the teaching of modern languages. In his two articles (1947a, 1947b) he stated that with this method ". . . results of high quality—such as private instruction alone has generally produced—can be attained with students working en masse. Yet it is effort-saving to the teacher (it has machines to do the tedious work), and labor saving to the student." Later he added, "Students came so well prepared to class, their answers were so sharp, that it took only a few minutes to cover the assignment or check that it was done in the right manner. No excruciating effort on the part of the embarrassed students." Working with records, the "aural-oral" students ". . . acquired grammatical habits with unexpected ease. ... As they applied them without Knowing them, they applied them more completely, for their application of rules did not depend on and was not limited by their understanding of them." The author was "amazed" at the results that had "conclusively proven" to him
that the "aural-oral" approach is best, not only for oral French, but for any French class. He concluded that emphasizing oral skills produced superior results in written as well as in oral work, that students preferred the oral method and worked harder, and that poorer students learned better, thus unifying the class with regard to ability. 15 (See chapter 4, pages 86-89 for studies on research in audio-lingual teaching.)