The Audio-lingual method, associated with Charles Fries and Robert Lado, set great store by listening to and repeating dialogues: the teacher should provide a native-speaker model for learners, and encourage mastery of pronunciation through repetition of small sections of speech (e.g., minimal pairs) in order to avoid errors.

The term imitation is not adequate to express the process by which [the learner] should work; what we require is absolute mimicry.

(Palmer, 1921)

Activities

1. Classroom illlustration: Pattern practice
2. Read more: Lado