Language Teaching: Direct Method

The principles of natural methods were the basis for what came to be the Direct Method. The most representative supporter of this method was Maximilian Berlitz in the USA, who established a chain of commercial language schools through the States. He baptized the method he used in his school as the Berlitz Methid. The characteristics of the Method were:

1. classroom instruction was donducted exclusively in the target language
2. only everyday vocabulary and sentences were taught
3. oral communication skills were built in a carefully graded progression organized around question and answer exchanges between trachers and students in small, intensive classes.
4. grammar was taught inductively
5. new traching points were introduced orally
6. concrete vocabulary was taught by association of ideas
7. both speech and listening comprehension were taught
8. correct pronunciation and grammar were emphasized  (Richard and Rogers 1988)

The most representative rule of the Direct Method is not translation "the Direct Method receives its name from the fact that meaning is to be connected directly with the target language without going through the preocess of translating into the students' native language" (Larsen:1998)