The article presents the audio-lingual model of teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language at the initial stage. The authors outline the main approaches to the understanding the concept "method", and discuss the previous experience of using the audio-lingual method. The founders of the audio-lingual method assumed the use of a target language as the only instrument during language learning process, though further researches proved that using the native language as an aid is more effective. To correct this drawback, the authors suggest using the audio-lingual method in connection with other teaching methods. The method in authors' interpretation has cultural orientation and helps foreign students to adapt to a new environment. The authors describe the model, where the audiolingual method serves only for introducing new vocabulary and grammatical structures. It involves multiple listening and repeating speech patterns and promotes to audio-oral habit-formation. The students, at this stage, have to repeat and memorise new linguistic structures. To bring them together, the authors propose to use additional communicative and grammatical activities. Such a contents structure lays the foundation for the final stage of the learning process - the production of students' own text. The key examples of the exercises based on the method are introduced.