As a teacher, there is a need to learn a variety ways of teaching. One method
of teaching will probably not suitable to use towards all types of situations. A method of teaching needs to change from time to time. According to Larsen-Freeman and Anderson in their book title Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching, teaching and learning process depends on the specific and unique needs of the students. Hence, for ELT Methodology course TSL 3103, my group and I were assigned to demonstrate one of the methods used to a particular language teaching context. As a result of draw lots, my group and I were needed to demonstrate an audio-lingual method in an English language classroom. Audio lingual method derives from the Behaviourist models of learning. By using the Stimulus-Response-Reinforcement model, it relied heavily on drills to form these habits; substitution was built into these drills so that in small steps the students was constantly learning and was shielded from the possibility of making mistakes (Harmer J, 1983). In addition, the structure uses for drilling are provided by the teacher, since audio-lingual method is very teacher centred. In order to carry out task 1, my group and I are required to find a suitable structure for the learners. We started our task by brainstorming the suitable 20-minutes activity and lesson plan for an audio-lingual classroom. My group had chosen occupation as our lesson themes. We also set out our target learners is year 3 from local primary school. The goals that we decided to achieve at the end of our virtual audio-lingual classroom are to make students understand kinds of occupation, students able to use occupations vocabularies in the sentences and dialogue provided and students able to use the target language communicatively. During our demonstration of an audio-lingual class, we started our induction by asking the students ambitions. It helped them to focus and develop their interest toward todays lesson. Then we moved to the second stage that is making the children understand kinds of occupations. We introduced several occupations by using pictures. This technique will help students to imagine and have a better understanding of occupations. In audio-lingual classroom the teacher will only use the target language. Since English is not the L1 of the learners, using pictures and teaching aids will help them to have a better understanding of the things that they are learning. After that, we provided the students with structural dialogue. Using this dialogue we asked them to listen carefully while we act out. Next, we read the text and drilling them to repeat after us. Any mispronunciations were immediately corrected and if the students stumble over one of the lines in the dialogue, a backward build up drill is used. This will prevent learners from making errors. After the students were able to pronounce and memorized the structural dialogue, a chain drill were carried out. In chain drill, we make the students communicate with each other by using the same dialogue. This will help them to learn how to use the language to communicate. Next, the students were drilled using single-slot substitutions drills. In this activity, the students were introduced by particular parts of speech occupy particular slots in sentences. They were required to learn which part of speech occupies which slot. This activity will help the learners to learn on how to create new sentences. Finally, at the end of our lesson we gave praises to every student that has done well. This positive reinforcement helps the students to develop correct habits. Further, our lecturer Mr Lim Chin Chye and peers were giving us several comments regarding our audio-lingual demonstration. We have received positive feedbacks from them saying that our demonstration was clear and every features of an audio-lingual method were smoothly put inside. The audience even rate us 18 over 20 for our demonstration. However, there were also some suggestions to improve our presentation. We were required to improve our pronunciation. My group and I had wrongly stressed out word in the sentence. In English, the verb are stress out more than the pronouns and yet we had done vice versa. In addition, my group and I had also made a dangerous attempt during the slotting activity. We put an article a in every blank slot of occupations. This will make the students confuse as there are also occupation that starts with article an such as an engineer. An audio-lingual method seems like a perfect method to be used as it drills students to speak in the target language accurately. It also improves the listening and speaking skills of the learners. However, there are lots of weaknesses in this method. The weaknesses are the students might get bored since there are always repeating the same structure, the students listening and speaking skills might get improve but not their writing skill, and the students will use an odd way of communication since they are only memorizing the structure provided. These weaknesses should be improved. For example, the students might get bored of the same structure of an audio-lingual classroom then as a teacher we can improvise the learning process to be interesting. If these weaknesses are improved, this method will be a perfect method to use in teaching and learning process. .