Applied Linguistics 27/3: 519526

doi:10.1093/applin/aml023

Oxford University Press 2006

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Audiolingual Method and Behaviorism:

From Misunderstanding to Myth
PETER J. CASTAGNARO
Temple University, Japan Campus
This article contends that the modern descendant of B. F. Skinners
experimental analysis of behavior, behavior analysis, and as well his 1957
masterwork Verbal Behavior, have rarely if ever been seriously contemplated
by applied linguists for possible contributions to the field. Rather, a pat
literature of dismissal has developed that justifies itself on (a) a fictitious link
between the audiolingual method and undifferentiated behaviorism, and/or
(b) a demonstrably erroneous notion that operant psychology is too simplistic
to effectively take up language issues. In reality, behavior analysis is alive,
well, and making significant contributions in applied language settings, but not
typically in the second language area.

Behaviorism is simply defined in the dictionary as a theory and method

of psychological investigation based on the objective study of behavior
(Onions 1973: 176). However simple the definition may be, the term has
stimulated instances of critique, misapprehension, and false impressions
within the field of second language teaching and learning that are nothing
short of legion. This is remarkable because so few behavior analysts have
ever contributed research to or even expressed a serious interest in second
language learning. Until relatively recently, no generally known second
language method of instruction or classroom procedure or practice can
be argued to have arisen from the operant behaviorist camp, or be said
to be clearly congruent with any commonly known practice or procedure
of behaviour analysis.
Nonetheless, two major strands of criticism have accrued in our
field, frequently, but not always simultaneously held, and bountiful in the
literature. First, regarding practice, there is a misleading presumption
that behavioral psychology underlies the routines of second language
teaching and learning gathered under the rubric of the audiolingual method,
a grouping of classroom, language laboratory, and textbook formulae and
drills disparaged in current second language pedagogical fashion. Second,
concerning explanatory power, there is a commonly accepted notion that
an undifferentiated behaviorism, rooted in methodological behaviorism or
S-R psychology (cf. Leigland 1989: 27) is so simplistic as to be inadequate

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to epistemologically engage the intricacies of language learning, first or

second, or, indeed, of any complex human behavior.
With very little effort, I collected two dozen examples from books and
journals representative of these two strands in the period 19762005. The
tone ranges from vituperative to mildly critical. For example, Brown (1980:
70) asserted the dominant influence of B. F. Skinners1 radical behaviorism
over second language teaching methodologies of the 1950s70s, specifically
over audiolingualism: A Skinnerian view of both language and language
learning dominated second language teaching methodology for several
decades . . . a heavy reliance in the classroom on the controlled practice of
verbal operants under carefully designed schedules of reinforcement.
Lightbown and Spada (1993: 25) concluded regarding explanatory power:
As in first language acquisition, the behaviorist account has proven to be at
best an incomplete explanation of second language acquisition. Psychologists
and second language acquisition researchers have moved on to new, more
complex theories of learning. Despite a plethora of available sources that
bring its accuracy, relevance, rhetoric, and even motivation into serious
question,2 Ellis (1994: 300) continued to parade Noam Chomskys wellknown criticism of Skinner with the following damning precis: These
behaviorist views have now been discredited. Chomskys (1959) review of
Verbal Behavior3 set in motion a re-evaluation of many of the central
claims . . . . The terms stimulus and response were exposed as vacuous
where language behavior was concerned. Continuing into the twenty-first
century, Richards (2002: 20) writes, Audiolingualism was derived from
research on learning associated with behaviorist psychology . . . . Translated
into a teaching method, this led to the Audiolingual Method, in which
language learning was seen as a process of habit formation and in which
target language patterns were presented for memorization and learning
through dialogue and drills.
Such assertions are seriously in error. To begin with, behaviorism as an
undifferentiated psychological approach no doubt began to evolve and
furcate within minutes of John B. Watsons 1913 clarion call at Columbia
University in his lecture, Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It. Its history
has certainly been far less than monolithic; witness the intervening
variables of Tolman, the logical constructions of Hull, and the operant
conditioning of B. F. Skinner, all by the end of the 1930s. Skinners thinking
is the current winner of the neo-behaviorist departures from Watsons
S-R psychology (cf. Smith 1986), and far from being discredited and its
terminology vacuous, it is alive, well, and forges continuing and new
pedagogical successes in applied language settings, albeit rarely in second
language learning and teaching. Furthermore, if audiolingualism (ALM) is
indeed a translation of Skinners operant psychology (1938, 1953, 1957) to
second language pedagogy, it has to be, at the very least, labeled a gross
mistranslation.

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MISMATCH WITH A FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS

Those who fail to attribute ALM fully to its sources in structural linguistics
ignore its inherent structuralism, and its obvious mismatch with Skinnerian
functionalism. Howatts (1984) historical account gets it right, and eschews
any initiating influence on ALM from operant psychology. The word habit
in the ALM context was actually a contribution of the structural linguist
Leonard Bloomfield (1942). Habit is not in the technical lexicon of
operant psychology, and, as it happens, it was a term that Skinner roundly
criticized in numerous places as non-technical, and misleading in its
ignoring of context and of relevant environmental contingencies. Skinner
(1974/1976: 71) wrote, Habit formation was a structuralist principle:
to acquire a habit was merely to become accustomed to behaving in a
given way. The contingencies of reinforcement which generated the
behaviour . . . were neglected. In fact, behavior analysis, the modern
descendant of Skinners experimental analysis of behavior, has rarely ventured
into second language pedagogy, as Sundberg (1991: 86) noted, and certainly
never via ALM. However, behavior analysts have strenuously and
with stupendous success, worked in the language acquisition area in
applied settings, mostly with adults and children who are pre-labeled
developmentally disabled, autistic, or disadvantaged. When they do such
workas they have done at least since the late 1960stheir typical
pedagogy more closely approximates (and actually predates) the second
language fields focus on form procedures (Long and Robinson 1998). Here
one encounters the presentation of form at the point of need, a quite
functional notion.
An exemplary, yet one of multitudinous pieces of research within a
verbal behavior or behavior analytic framework in an applied setting is
that of Sundberg et al. (2002). This research is aimed at getting three
children who have been diagnosed as autistic to ask for information.
These researchers had noted the frequent inability of such children
to naturally acquire WH-questions, and how, in normal children, these are
generative to further language growth. This particular applied research, as
has become increasingly common since the 1980s, makes comprehensive use
of the concepts and terminology of Skinner (1957), including the use of
reformulations of motivation as establishing operations that may be contrived
to improve learning (Michael 1982, 1988, 1993, 2000).
Sundberg et al. (2002) stated that the goal of the research (four single case
experiments involving three children, ages five, six, and eight) was to
determine if the mands Where? and Who? could be taught to
children with autism by contriving . . . EOs [establishing operations] . . . and
providing only specific verbal information as a consequence. They noted
Skinners (1957: 39) definition of question as a mand that specifies verbal
action, ancillary to the general mand definition (Skinner 1957: 356) of
a verbal operant in which the performance is reinforced by a characteristic

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consequence and is therefore under the functional control of relevant

conditions of deprivation or aversive stimulation. Michael (1993: 192)
defined establishing operation (EO) as a variable that affects an organism by
momentarily altering (a) the reinforcing consequences of other events and
(b) the frequency of occurrence of that part of the organisms repertoire
relevant to these events as consequences.
In Sundberg et al.s (2002) first experiment, during baseline condition,
one child, Kevin, aged five, was asked to locate items that he found
reinforcing (a giraffe toy, a favorite book) plus neutral items that had no
history of being reinforcing for him (a cup, a pen) in various containers
(a bag, box, or can). Kevin was able through prior training to both
discriminate among and mand (ask to be given) the items by name. The
researcher then placed one of the items inside a container, and asked
the child to remove it; this was successfully done, and the child was allowed
to keep the item, hold and play with it for a short period. In succeeding
trials, no item was placed in the selected container, but rather, unkown to
Kevin, in another container about two meters away. Kevin was nonetheless
asked to remove named items from the selected one. In such trials, he
was unable to verbally emit the mand Where____? either orally or
in American Sign Language, despite an obviously present establishing
operation indicated by his looking about and actively searching for the
missing item.
In the intervention condition, the same procedure was followed as in baseline,
but for only two items, one reinforcing and the other neutral. However,
when asked to find the item in, say, the can, and when Where _____? was not
forthcoming as the child searched, the researcher modeled the correct
response, asking for an echoic response, Say wheres the giraffe?
Upon the child repeating the modeled request correctly, the missing item
was immediately indicated, and the child was allowed to hold and play
with it. Ten training trials were performed in this way, five for each item,
over each of 15 20-minute daily sessions (three for baseline, 12 for
intervention). The modeling and prompts were gradually faded as the childs
performances improved to a pre-set criterion of 100 per cent correct
responses in two successive sessions. Several days later, when Kevins
lunchbox was re-located within the classroom from its normal storage
place, he correctly manded for information about its different location
using where.
Obviously, Sundberg et al. (2002) would never simply arrange an out-ofcontext drill of a Where______? echoic without consideration of and arranging
for transfer to a target environment with manding conditions. Rather, as has
been shown with this study, frequency of performance is observed across
varying conditions; form is presented at the point of an induced need as part
of instruction; generalized performance within target conditions is carefully
arranged, and probes for their occurrence are made.

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THE PROBLEM WITH RIVERS (1964)

More than any other source, it is probably Wilga Rivers work that is most
responsible for audiolingualism being laid at Skinners door. She wrote:
There would appear to be two distinct schools of thought among
psychologists on the nature of language, the behaviorist school in
the Watson tradition, represented by Skinner, which takes account
only of physical manifestations of language that are outwardly
observable, and the neo-behavioristic which allows place for
mediational and emotional processes that are not directly
observable . . . . It is the contention of the writer that the audio-lingual
methods are based on the Skinnerian theory, and it is from this basic
theoretical position that their advocacy of mimicry-memorization in
pattern drills and dialogue learning has been derived. (Rivers 1964: 29,
emphasis added).
Aside from the fact that Skinners functionalism is clearly shown in all
his canonical works (cf. Catania and Harnad 1988), and that his operant
approach involved a distinct departure from Watsons S-R psychology, and
those of Hull and Tolman, two other neobehaviorists who also left Watson
behind (Smith 1986: 70, 152, 263), Rivers contention that mimicrymemorization, pattern practice, and dialogue memorization arise out of
Skinners operant approach to verbal behavior is problematic and can be
shown to be so from a simple examination of publication dates and
referencing.
As Lado (1964: 924) notes, mimicry-memorization was introduced
by Bloomfield in his 1942 pamphlet, and pattern and dialogue practices by
Fries (1978/1945). Although Skinner (1957: 457) began thinking about an
operant approach to verbal behavior as early as 1934, the publications by
Bloomfield and Fries nonetheless antedate the four key public Skinner
productions regarding the topic. These include a course on verbal behavior at
Columbia University in 1947, the William James Lectures at Harvard
University in the academic year 194748 (Skinner 1957: vii), and the
publication of Science and Human Behavior (1953) and Verbal Behavior (1957).
The only public Skinner sources which touch on verbal behavior prior to
Bloomfields and Fries publications would have been a course on literary
and verbal behavior taught in the summer of 1938 at Harvard and again in
1939 at the University of Chicago (Skinner 1957: vii). There were also several
psychological journal articles that analyzed literary techniques and word
distributions. Beyond this, it is an indisputable fact that no Skinner source,
regarding verbal behavior or otherwise, is cited in the pedagogical works of
1942 and 1945 by Bloomfield and Fries respectively. Nonetheless, Rivers
(1964) refers copiously to Skinners William James Lectures (194748) and
Verbal Behavior (1957).
I realize that many post-Bloomfield/post-Fries audiolingualists, amidst
their ongoing practice, may well have reached out to operant psychology

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to justify their method, but if so, they very much misunderstood, as

Wilga Rivers (1964) seems to have, its functional origins. Succinctly, Hall and
Sundberg have stated:
Verbal Behavior contributed a functional alternative to the
linguistic model and revealed a type of complexity in verbal
events that had previously been overlooked. Because verbal
relations included both response forms and their controlling
variables, identical topographies could participate in a number
of different verbal relations and different topographies could
participate in a single verbal relation. The dependent variable
unit now included controlling variables as well as topographies.
(Hall and Sundberg 1987: 41)
Rivers (1964) seems to miss this point. Having saddled Skinner with being
ALMs theoretical parent, she then goes on to interpret ALM in Skinnerian
terms:
In a foreign language learning situation, Skinners paradigm would
work in the following way. The student emits a foreign language
response which is comprehended and thus rewarded by the
reinforcement of the teachers approval. It is now likely to recur,
and, with continued reinforcement, it becomes established in
the students repertoire as an instrumental response, capable
of obtaining certain satisfactions for the student in the form of
comprehension and approval in classroom situations. It is even
more strongly reinforced if by means of it he obtains what he
wants in a foreign language environment . . . . (Rivers 1964: 32)
Well, no. First of all, comprehension in any of its forms or synonyms is not
a term Skinner would use, being an implied, unobservable process. Such
a way-station construct has proven to be unnecessary in a functional
analysis of behavior. Secondly, and more to the point, Rivers instrumental
response is only such in the context it was taught, say as a manded echoic in
an ALM repetition drill.
Teacher: Say: wheres my lunch box?
Student: Wheres my lunch box?
The contingencies surrounding a teacher-manded echoic response from
a student are not the same as those supporting the students mand Wheres
my lunch box? as she or he would utter it, having misplaced a lunch box.
Therefore, the teachers task continues beyond the echoic response to the
creation of a true mand context for the student performance, and always
with an eye to the natural contingencies of the target verbal community.
Isnt this essentially the same consideration that over the past 30 years
has motivated second language learning and teaching away from structural

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syllabuses, and called forth communicative approaches, content-based

instruction, L2 for specific purposes, task-based instruction, in short, context
and contingencies, into second language pedagogy? Well, as has been pointed
out, the target environment has been an integral part of behavior analytic
research and pedagogy from its inception, given its fundamental recognition
of the functional relationship between behavior and its environmental
contingencies.
The earlier observation by Hall and Sundberg (1987) is foundational and
indicative of the rich mine of hypothetical thinking and insights which
even now has not been exhausted and is still being drawn from the pages of
Verbal Behavior (1957). This goes directly to the issue of operant psychologys
competency to meaningfully address language/verbal behavior in general,
and second language acquisition in particular. In the field of second language
learning and teaching, it would appear that this has been pretty much
decided in the negative. I would submit, however, that this determination
has been made in ignorance of the facts that always have been available.
Until these facts are examined and considered within the field, all such
conclusions are premature and have the status of myth.
Final version received June 2006

NOTES
1 B. F. Skinner (19041990), who,
according to Donahoe and Palmer
(1994: 6), consistently and persuasively championed the explanatory
power of careful analyses of observed
environmental
and
behavioral
events, published more than 190
articles and books in his career.
These included The Behavior of Organisms (1938), which reported his conclusions concerning the relationship
of environment and behavior based
on laboratory animal studies, followed
by Science and Human Behavior (1953)
and Verbal Behavior (1957), which,
respectively,
via
interpretation,
brought human behavior in general
and human verbal behavior in

particular within the same basic

paradigm.
2 See, for example, MacCroquodale
(1970), Richelle (1976), Czubaroff
(1988), Postal (1988), Andresen
(1990), and Knapp (1992).
3 The book Verbal Behavior (1957) by
Skinner is given the following
notation by Donahoe and Palmer
(1994: 296 fn 2): Having heard
that the book was scrutinized and
caustically
dismissed
by
Noam
Chomsky in a 1959 review, most
psychologists have chosen not to
read it. Nevertheless, the review is
seriously flawed, and the book
remains a masterpiece of selectionist
interpretation.

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