The audiolingual method was developed in the United States during the late 1950s and 1960s as a reaction against the Grammar-translation approach. It drew on the behaviourist view (see section 2.2.3.1) which assumed that explanation of language was not helpful in language learning and that learners would best learn through carefully structured input, repetition and feedback. The idea was that the second language should be taught as a series of structural patterns which learners would automatize one by one. Automatization was to be achieved mainly through drilling; it was a key tenet of audiolingualism that learners had to automatize a taught structure correctly before being introduced to a new one.

Audiolingualism, in contrast to the Grammar-translation approach, focused almost exclusively on skill development, but a rather narrow interpretation of it: automatization of key language patterns through drilling (see DeKeyser, 1998: 53-54). As such, it had the following limitations:

• It goes against much that we now know about the natural development of interlanguage, in particular that second language learners seem to build up control over grammatical structures very gradually through implicit induction. Thus, it seems implausible that learners would be able to internalize the grammar of a language effectively through drilling one grammatical structure after another.
• Learners may be able to use memorized 'chunks' of language in restricted contexts, but drilling ('blind' repetition) does not seem to bring about immediate segmentation of chunks. This is not to say that drilling isn't helpful; only that it is limited in its impact.
• Unsurprisingly, the audiolingual technique of repeating phrases significant only for their formal structure, not for their meaning, was boring and unmotivating. Learners might be able to utter examples of a structural pattern, but were given little chance to use the target language to express their own needs and ideas.