The direct method of teaching in the classrooms is called the oral method or the natural method. It was developed as a kind of reaction to Grammar Translation Method. It was based on the observations of Childs language learning, hence naturalistic principles of language learning more like first language acquisition. You know in learning our mother language, we never study books of grammar, composition writing and translation. But we learn all the aspects of the language by being in direct contact with the natural environment where the language is spoken. We hear speaking our elders, peers, street fellows and we imitate them. We repeat the sounds again and again and in this way we attain the mastery of the language. The approach the “Direct Method” is similar to this approach. In direct method, the teacher creates an artificial atmosphere of English speaking community. He speaks English, the students imitate him. He asks questions in English and the student’s answer in the same way. In this way the whole activity goes on in the language, which is being learnt.
Since the direct method aims at speech and fluency, learners get a good start and may gain command over the target soon. It can be successful and popular, mostly in private language schools where students are highly motivated and mature speakers can be employed. In the public sector schools, this method cannot be implemented properly because of constraints of budgets, large classes, time and teacher’s background. It is dependent on the teacher’s skill and personality. All teachers cannot be proficient in a foreign or second language.
The principles of Direct Method include the Oral Teaching, Avoiding the use of mother language, Proceeding from the nouns of common use to simple sentences, Systematic approach and using inductive method for teaching grammar. The Oral Teaching, in the direct method as your know, the approach is direct. Therefore, to introduce the children with the nouns and structures of the new language, beginning is made with oral teaching. When the students have learnt a good number of nouns of daily use, the effort is made to use them I simple structures, by construct drill they are able to use the structure with other nouns. For example, they have learnt chair, table, man, woman, room, tree, girl, boy, book etc. When they have practiced the structure “This is a chair”, they will be able to complete other sentences by using the other nouns. The role of the teacher will be just to point towards some article as “Tablet” and “Book” and let a bright student complete the sentence first. He should encourage sufficient practice by repeating the sentence in a chorus. After developing sufficient vocabulary by oral practice, attention should be paid to written language.
