CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background
The Audio Lingual Method (ALM) is a method which was introduced in the United States of America (USA) in 1940s. Even though the method is considered very old, many language teachers still like it and believe that it is a powerful method. The emergence of the method was a response to the need for a radical change of foreign language teaching due to the unfriendly relationship between USA and Russia, which lunched its first satellite in 1957. The United States prevented from its people from becoming isolates people from scientific advances made in other countries. The method was much influenced by a method called Army Specialized Training Program (ATSP). The ATSP was triggered by the condition from which USA entered World War II and tried to send its army to take up positions in other countries. USA government found itself in a need of personnel trained in a large number and wide variety of language, and the audio-lingual method could be the answer. The method was also a response to the Reading Method and the Grammar Translation Method. At that time many Americans felt unsatisfied with the reading aim and they thought that speaking was more important then reading.
The method was finally developed from the combination of the principles of structural linguistic theory, contrastive analysis, aura-oral procedures, and behaviorist psychology (Richard and Rodgers, 2001: 54-55). The method was accepted by people in other countries and introduced in Indonesia in 1960’s. Not much literature on the audio-lingual method is now available and most of the ideas in this part have been adapted from how to Teach Foreign Languages Effectively (Huebener, 1969).