3.

THE DIRECT METHOD

The Direct method originated in the 19th century through the work of a number of important thinkers, notably Lambert Sauveur a Frenchman who opened a language school in Boston in 1869. His system of teaching French became known as the natural method. The direct method is its offshoot. The basic premise of the direct method is that second language learning should be more like first language learning. The method includes lots of oral interaction and the spontaneous use of language. The teacher discourages translation between first and second languages, and puts little emphasis on the rules of grammar. The direct method classroom should be one of small, intensive classes which stressed both speech and listening comprehension. The teacher gives instruction exclusively in the target language, teaching everyday vocabulary and sentences. The teacher develops oral communication skills in a careful progression that she frequently organizes around questions-and-answers exchanges. The teacher explains new teaching points through modelling and practice. A direct approach instructor emphasizes correct pronunciation and grammar, which she teaches inductively. She presents concrete vocabulary through demonstration, realia and pictures, for example, and teaches abstract vocabulary through association of ideas. This method was the first to catch the attention of both language teachers and language teaching specialists, and it offered a methodology that appeared to move language teaching into a new era. Techniques used in this area are: reading aloud, questionanswer practice, getting students to self-correct, conversation practice, fill in the blanks, dictation, map drawing, paragraph writing, etc. The Direct Method was quite successful in private language schools such as the Berlitz chain where the paying students had high motivation in practising the language in small intensive classes. But in public schools it was difficult to implement this method. By the 1920s it started to decline. In France and Germany they started to use a modified version combining the Direct Method with more controlled grammar-based activities. The popularity of this method made language specialists from the US to try to implement it in the United States, too. A study begun in 1923 stated that no single method could guarantee successful results. The goal of trying to teach conversational skills was considered impractical because of the restricted time available for language teaching, because of the limited skills of the teachers, and because they considered that conversational skills were irrelevant for college students. The main result of all this was that reading became the main goal of most modern language programs in the U.S and remained so until World War II. As linguists recognized the limitations of the Direct Method, the representatives of the Reform movement laid the foundations of a new method, which led to Audio-lingualism in the United States and the Oral Approach or Situational Language Teaching in Britain. One of the lasting legacies of the Direct Method was the notion of method itself. The controversy over it was the first of many debates over how second and foreign languages should be taught.