This is going to be a very short post in contrast to most of my posts. Today I just wanted to share a very concise definition of the ALG method, invented by Dr. Marvin Brown and used at the AUA school in Bangkok to teach Thai. This definition was taken from the book “The Listening Approach“.

Two teachers talk to the class and to each other as they do things in clear close view of the students. There are no books. What they do and say must be both comprehensible and interesting. (In Krashen’s terms, the teachers provide comprehensible input.) The students sometimes participate and sometimes do not, but they always look, listen, and try to understand what is going on, with as little conscious attention on the language as possible. This means not only that they don’t take notes or try to remember sounds, words, or patterns; it also means that they don’t speak—not until words and phrases come to them without their conscious attention. This may take several hundred hours.

The rationale for this method and the story of the creator can be found in his book “From the Outside In: The Secret to Automatic Language Growth“.