The drill has something of the continuity of a real collection of utterances. Tell your boss some of the things you object to doing. In this context drills can succeed. But if drills become ends in themselves, students may never find out what it really is to communicate in another language. Apparently imitation and repetition of correct expression are far more efficacious in forming correct habits than grammatical knowledge .
Skinner assumes that behaviour is the total of conditioned and associated responses.
Learning depends on the frequency with which the responses are repeated , consistent reinforcement by suitably rewarding correct responses and on careful sequencing of Stimulus-Response bonds so as to minimize the chance of mistakes. Programming into easily assimilable and minimal steps allows control and conditioning of responses and building them into a behaviour pattern . Associated with behaviourism and equally responsible for the kind of language syllabuses much in evidence in the 1960s is the theory of structural linguistics . Behaviourism, Structuralism and reiteration of the fact that learners learn to speak L2 by speaking it have contributed in particular to the design of Audiolingual Courses . The major emphasis is on the mechanical production of the utterance as a language form and in the development of automatic responses of the desired nature - i.e. good habits.