The Direct Method

The Direct Method

The direct method objective is to make students know how to make use of target language in communication by using instructions only. Even based on the name, it is a method of teaching using only the target language without any translation of native language allowed. Instead, to make students understand key concepts will requires a lot of teaching aid and demonstrations because it is believed to increase the effectiveness in using the target language by students in communication area. The method have been structured this way because to make students critically think in the target language. The roles of teacher and students are to communicate with each other like a partners compared in grammar translation method of teacher centre in learning process. Other than that, its students to student’s interaction as teacher directed the teaching.

In direct method students need to relate the meaning of the target language directly and in helping the process of learning, the use of realia, pictures or even pantomime brings great deal in teaching because we try to make the situations real. For example, grammar rules itself need to be discovered inductively and by generalization as an explicit grammar rule is not given. Students often use complete sentence in learning new vocabulary. As the language use in communication rather than writing, students daily speech include factors of understanding history, geography and culture about the target language when they practice interactions or conversations with the language. The type of assessment for this method is pretty direct as well as it only assessing the use of language and not the knowledge of the language. For instance, interview and oral speaking will be used as tests for student’s demonstration of understanding. Self corrected is applied whenever necessary.

Besides that, other techniques in teaching would be reading aloud, question and answer exercises, conversation practice, fill-in-the-blanks, dictation (listening to the conversation), map drawing and  paragraph writing. Upon my own experiences, I concern that this method can only be apply to students who have average and high proficiency language learning in order to learn the target language because at least they can associate better the meaning or examples the teacher trying to deliver with. Students with low level of understanding or experience would not benefits much from this approach as they did not have the enough comprehension of the meaning of the target language even if the teacher use modeling. It will be quite difficult for them to follow up later because inside language learning, the topics of grammar and sentence construction are connected to one another. It is like without background knowledge of information, would you yourself understand about what other people try to teach you about new concepts using the target language, except if you apply common sense in the situation. Would you?

Even though the method best fits students with high and average level, that does not mean that each of the techniques are not applicable. Look at the conversation practice example; I think it is very good teaching and learning skills for students with low achievement as it also gave them a sense of confidents to try to converse using the language. It makes learning more meaningful when you can apply it for real life situation too. It’s a technique that I believe people would like to adopt in learning and teaching especially to teachers who planning to teach language.