Does Teaching Spanish by the Audio-Lingual Approach Prepare the Student for Reading and Writing

In order that his conclusions may be evaluated, it seems only proper that one who undertakes to read a paper on this subject amidst the widespread national enthusiasm for foreign language study fostered by the National Defense Education Act of 1958 should state the extent of his experience and contact with the use of the audio-lingual procedure.* Despite the new emphasis now being placed on this recently named technique, its learning sequence, that is, understanding and speaking the foreign language first, then reading and writing it, was used widely by the military services in their language-training programs during World War II. It was as a war-time military intelligence officer that I first came into contact with interpreters and interrogators trained by the army in this approach. Later, during a ninety-day period at the Army Language School at the Presidio of Monterey, California, I participated as an instructor, student, and observer in that school's famous teaching program. Last summer, at one of the government-financed Language Institutes, I observed briefly the achievement of a group of high school students who had just completed five weeks of pre-reading audio-lingual instruction, and I discussed the results with the teacher who taught the course and with some of the Institute members who observed the methods of instruction during the five weeks. This, then, along with fourteen years of college teaching experience using the new-key sequence long before it was given this name, and a reading of the literature on methods of teaching foreign, languages found in our professional journals, is the basis of the treatment given this subject in the present paper. The problem presented for discussion by our chairman is: Does the teaching of Spanish by the audio-lingual prepare the student for reading and writing? In other words, is a student able to read (interpreted here to mean reading for comprehension of content) and to write Spanish if he has first been taught to understand and to speak it? The term audiolingual approach in itself implies a period of audio-lingual or oral-aural drill on basic phrases and patterns. This drill consists of constant repetition, mimicry-memorization, variation exercises, and pattern substitutions. During this period, the student sees no written or printed Spanish words at all. The length of time to be devoted exclusively to this oral practice can vary from several days to an entire semester in college or a year in high school, depending on such factors as the teacher's skill in the use of aural-oral techniques, the size and ability of the class, and the nature of the materials used. This for some teachers of Spanish will prove to be a radical departure from the method to which they have clung for so many years. But those who are bold enough to try it will find that good students who have been properly taught a unit of Spanish by means of the audio-lingual technique described above will be able to recognize the words of this same unit in print well enough to read them aloud with considerable accuracy in pronunciation and with good comprehension of their meaning provided they have understood the meaning during the audio-lingual drill. This conclusion requires elaboration. In the first place, I say good student because, both through experience and observation, I have been convinced that even the most *A paper delivered at the 41st Annual Meeting of the AATSP, Chicago, Dec. 28-30, 1959

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