Page 41 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom

The Audiolingual Method

Classroom Insight: Disappearing Dialogues
Although Mateja is not particularly keen on All this time, pupils have to try to recreate the
using drills in her teaching, she often uses dialogue and repeat it, trying to remember
communicative drills to focus on accuracy. the missing words.
One of the activities which the learners really
B: May I borrow your ?
enjoy is the ‘disappearing dialogues’ drill.
G: Yes, of course. you are.
1. She shows a picture of two children to the
B: May I borrow ?
pupils and elicits a dialogue taking place
between them. Together with the chil- G: Yes, of course. .
B: May I ?
dren they come up with something like:
G: Yes, .Here .
Boy: May I borrow your pencil? B: May ?
Girl: Yes,ofcourse. Here youare. G: Yes, .
2. She then projects the dialogue on the In a similar activity in higher grades, learn-
screen (using a Powerpoint slide) and ers can then be asked to write down the di-
drills it with the students, encouraging alogue (individually or in pairs) and then
learners to use different voices (e.g. talk- check if they have written everything cor-
ing silly, whispering, begging, shouting rectly. The drilling activity is teacher-centred
etc.) to make the repetition more exciting. and structure-based but according to Mateja,
3. In the next slide, she starts omitting words the pupils usually thoroughly enjoy it. In ad-
in the dialogue, first just one word (e.g. dition, Mateja then encourages the learners
pencil), then two (e.g. pencil and here), to use the communicative pattern acquired
then whole phrases (e.g. your pencil) and in the activity in their pupil-pupil classroom
until the whole dialogue disappears. communication.

Let’s go by train,
let’s go by plane,
let’s go by car,
it’s not that far.

Finally, Harmer (2014) points out that drilling does not have to be boring
and tedious. There are several ways of making drilling more communicative
and fun, such as using a variety of guessing games and drill-based interactive
tasks.

The PPP Model
An off-shoot of the audiolingual method is the ‘Presentation, Practice and
Production’ model or the PPP model as it is usually referred to, one of the
most well-known language lesson procedures or teaching sequences in the
history of ELT (Harmer, 2007; Skela & Dagarin Fojkar, 2009). The PPP lesson
model (Figure 2.1 on p. 42) encompasses three phases (Richards & Rodgers,
2001): presentation (introduction of a new teaching item in context), practice

41