DIRECT METHOD

DIRECT METHOD

        Also known as Reform Method / Natural Method / Phonetical Method / Anti-grammatical Method

        All reformers were vehemently opposed to teaching of formal grammar and aware that language learning was more than the learning of rules and the acquisition of imperfect translation skills.

        Vietor ('Die Sprachunterricht muss umkehren' 1882) "This study of grammar is a useless torture. It is certainly not understood; therefore it can have no effect as far as the moulding of the intellect is concerned and no-one could seriously believe that children could learn their living German tongue from it."

        Instead grammar should be acquired inductively by inducing the rules of how the language behaves from the actual language itself. "Never tell the children anything they can find out for themselves." (Jesperin 1904)
        
        Direct Method based on belief that:

            1     Knowing a language was being able to speak it! Primacy of spoken word. New method laid great stress on correct pronunciation and target language from outset. Advocated teaching of oral skills at expense of every traditional aim of language teaching.

            2     Second language learning must be an imitation of first language learning, as this is the natural way humans learn any language, and so MT has no place in FL lesson. (Baby never relies on another language to learn its first language).

            3     Printed word must be kept away from second language learner for as long as possible (same as first language learner, who doesn't use printed word until he has good grasp of speech).

            4     The written word / writing should be delayed until after the printed word has been introduced.

            5     The learning of grammar/ translating skills should be avoided because they involve the application of the MT.

            6     All above items must be avoided because they hinder the acquisition of a good oral proficiency

The Audio-lingual method

The Audio-lingual method


Audio-lingual Method: Or the Army Method or also the New Key is a style of teaching used in teaching foreign languages. It is based on behaviorist ideology, which professes that certain traits of living things, and in this case humans, could be trained through a system of reinforcement—correct use of a trait would receive positive feedback while incorrect use of that trait would receive negative feedback. This approach to language learning was similar to another, earlier method called the Direct Method. Like the Direct Method, the Audio-Lingual Method advised that students be taught a language directly, without using the students'''' native language to explain new words or grammar in the target language. However, unlike the Direct Method, the Audio-lingual Method didn’t focus on teaching vocabulary. Rather, the teacher drilled students in the use of grammar. Applied to language instruction, and often within the context of the language lab, this means that the instructor would present the correct model of a sentence and the students would have to repeat it. The teacher would then continue by presenting new words for the students to sample in the same structure. In audio-lingualism, there is no explicit grammar instruction—everything is simply memorized in form. The idea is for the students to practice the particular construct until they can use it spontaneously. In this manner, the lessons are built on static drills in which the students have little or no control on their own output; the teacher is expecting a particular response and not providing that will result in a student receiving negative feedback. Charles Fries, the director of the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan, the first of its kind in the United States, believed that learning structure or grammar was the starting point for the student. In other words, it was the students’ job to orally recite the basic sentence patterns and grammatical structures. The students were only given “enough vocabulary to make such drills possible.” (Richards, J.C. et-al. 1986). Fries later included principles for behavioral psychology, as developed by B.F. Skinner, into this method



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