Scherer and Wertheimer (1964) compared the results of audio-lingual versus traditional teaching procedures. In this study, the authors included 165
15 lt should be noted, as Delattre admitted, that ". . . some problems did come up. First, two students registered objection to the Dean in the very beginning and were allowed to transfer. Then twice during the first semester, some students campaigned to abandon the system and return to the book method of instruction.”
126 Part One: Theory
audio-lingual students and 124 traditional students in elementary German classes over a two-year period. The achievement test scores indicated that the students in the audio-lingual classes were significantly superior in listening and speaking at the end of the second semester. The students in the traditional classes received significantly higher scores in translating, reading, and writing. During the second year of the experiment, students from both groups were mixed in the typical second-year class. At the end of the second year, the audio-lingual students were better in speaking; the traditional students were better in writing and in translating from German to English. There were no differences in the other skills.
CONCLUSION
Proponents of the audio-lingual approach aim to duplicate first-language habits in the second-language learner. The theoretical bases for their approach come from two other fields, descriptive linguistics and behavioristic psychology. Politzer (1964b, p. 149) states, "Thus, behaviorism and formal analysis of language were the chief features of the linguistic impact on language instruction in the 1940s." Since behaviorism is not specifically a linguistic theory, this statement serves to reflect the influence of behavioristic psychology on descriptive linguistics. Valette (1966, p. 132) recognizes the contribution of behaviorists to modern-language teaching when she states, "The new curriculum materials have been devised on the assumption that foreign-language learning is basically a mechanical process of habit formation."
Textbooks based on the audio-lingual theory have been quite widely used since the inception of the NDEA language institutes, which popularized this approach. Second and even third editions of these original texts are now on the market. As they have evolved, the direction has been toward including more grammatical explanation and using the first language more to insure comprehension. Too, in keeping with the present stress on eclecticism, teachers are more inclined to modify audio-lingual tenets as they seek to find the most efficient approach to use with their students. Of course, dialog practice and pattern practice drills under the external control of the teacher and/or the textual materials of the stimuli and reinforcement underlie the major portion of the classroom activities. The goal is to condition in second-language learners the same types of automatic speech habits they have in their native language. The process is a very tightly controlled one in which the students are conditioned to give predetermined responses in order to avoid the errors typically made by students who create non-native forms as they attempt to communicate. Since the students typically spend so much time listening to a model and repeating after the model or making minor changes in the model
sentence, the strengths of this approach are the students' pronunciation, their auditory memory, their ability to process sounds at native speed, and their speed of speech during drill practice.