The discussion presented here seeks to defend Lado's principle of "speech before writing" and focuses attention on the comparative effectiveness of audio versus visual presentation of language material. Reports on several experiments dealing with this problem lead the author to conclude that, as long as we have the tendency of verbalization or presumable auditory storage of inner speech, auditory image plays a vital role in verbal behavior and that establishing a solid auditory image of the target language is the very basis of acquisition of the language. This can be achieved by aural exposure to the language and by imitative verbalization of the auditory stimuli. (Author/VM)