There are many methods in teaching English as a foreign language, each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages. In order to maximize those methods, we could combine them into one method. This paper explains about Audio Lingual Method (ALM) and Guided Note Taking Method as combined method.
Audio Lingual Method is based on Direct Method, but this method does not focus on vocabulary. In this method, the teacher uses target language all time and the language is taught through repetition. The advantages of this method are the students active and they can acquire listening and speaking skills in a short time, and the disadvantages of this method are boring for some students and they do not require much grammar skills. In order to maximize this method, we may use Guided Note Taking Method. Guided Note Taking Method is a speech method, but the students active to take notes with some guide from the teacher through guided notes.
“Guided notes are instructor-prepared handouts that provide all students with background information and standard cues with specific spaces to write key facts, concepts, and/or relationships during the lecture” (Heward, 2005, p. 1).
Research shows that students recall more lecture material if they record it in their notes, and ultimately perform better on tests of recall and synthesis than students who do not take notes. More specifically, note-taking serves two distinct functions for students: external storage and cognitive encoding. External storage means that notes are used as a place to keep knowledge and information for later review, especially when they forget it. Encoding of information is what students might not realize that the note-taking process also serves a vital function in helping to write the information on the brain. “The literature shows that people better retain materials that they have generated themselves (i.e., personal notes) than materials generated by others (i.e., someone else’s notes), and that students actually begin to learn and memorize during note-taking, particularly when engaged in deep comprehension” (Heward, 2005, p. 3). This method focus on teaching grammar rules, so this would maximize the Audio Lingual Method. The students require listening, speaking, and also grammar skills.
This paper explains the method which was used to teach the second grade of Senior High School 13 Makassar with 35 students. All of the students were from Makassar, but they had different tribes. Most of them were easy to understand and they interested in learning English through that method even not all of them had same learning style, some are audio, some are visual, and some are audio-visual.
As the writer stated before that the aims of this combined method were to improve not only the students’ communication skills but also grammar skills. The writer thought that second year students were expected to be able to communicate at least for simple conversations, beside that grammar skills were also very important for their age. The average age of the second grade students of Senior High School of Makassar was sixteen years old which the level was beginner. They had average grammar and vocabulary mastery, and their listening skill was not bad, but their speaking skill was very low. So this combined method would help them to master English.
The main material of this combined method was dialogues, all of the aimed skills are learned through it. There are several stages in learning process of this method:
a. Stage I
- Listening: After opening and review the last lesson, the teacher reads a dialogue and modeling it. The students know they will be expected to eventually memorize the dialog. Then the teacher reads it once again, but this time the whole class repeats each of the lines of the dialogue after her model. They repeat each line several times before moving on to next line.
- Chain drills: The teacher initiates a chain drill with four of the lines from the dialogue. A chain drill gives students an opportunity to say the lines individually. The teacher listens and can tell which students are struggling and will need more practice.
b. Stage II
- Performing: The teacher selects two students to perform the entire dialogue. When they finished, two others do the same. Not everyone has a chance to say the dialogue in a pair, but perhaps they will sometimes in the other day.
- Taking notes: The teacher explains the grammar rules based on the dialogues, but she delivered handouts to the students first. While the teacher explaining, the students fill the blank of the handout. So the students still active following the explanation.
c. Stage III
- Closing: The teacher closes the class using English. But before closing, the students are given some quizzes about what they learned today.
This method does not require to modify the classroom management. The tables are arranged normally, as settled before. The teacher may use any media such as laboratory media, LCD projector, speaker, and so on or just read it aloud to teach the dialogues.
In this method, both the teacher and the students are active. While the teacher reads the dialogues and modeling it, the students active in listening without make any voices and then they repeat the dialogues. In chain drills activity, the students repeat the dialogues individually so the teacher will know whish students need more help. Everyone in the class has a chance to perform the dialogues but not in one day, the teacher chooses them randomly.
The main assessment method of this teaching method is the final results, it means that the assessment is based on the students’ mastery of communication skills and grammar skills. To evaluate the communication skills, we may use oral test. The teacher makes a conversation and assesses the response of each student. To evaluate the grammar skills, we may use written test. The teacher asks the students to write down the conversation they had in oral test with correct grammar.
As the conclusion, Combining Audio Lingual Method with Guided Note Taking Method will be a strong method to teach English especially as a foreign language. This combined method is expected to improve communication skills and grammar skills of senior high school students. The main material of this method is dialogues between two people or more. The teacher reads the dialogues and then the students repeat it. In the core activity, the students perform the dialogues in front of class. After that, they learn about the grammar rules and take notes. There are oral and written test to evaluate their final results.
References
Heward, W. L. (2005).
Guided Notes: Improving the Effectiveness of Your Lectures. Ohio: Quark X Press.
Larsen-Freeman, Diane. (1986).
Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. S. (1986).
Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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