Characteristic of Direct Method

Principles and Procedures (Jack C. Richard and Theodore S. Rodger: 1992) :
1. Classroom instruction was conducted exclusively in the target language.
2. Only everyday vocabulary and sentences were taught.
3. Oral communication skills were built up in a carefully graded progression organized around question and answer exchanges between teachers and students in small, intensive classes.
4. Grammar was taught inductively.
5. New teaching points were introduced orally.
6. Concrete vocabulary was taught through demonstration, objects, and pictures; abstract vocabulary was taught by association of ideas.
7. Both speech and listening comprehension were taught.
8. Correct pronunciation and grammar were emphasized.

DIRECT METHOD

Direct method is a method of teaching a foreign language with minimal use of the pupil's native language and of formal grammar. It was established in Germany and France around 1900.
By direct method, teaching and learning process is held without using their native language. If they are studying English language, they have to speak in English along the class. One basic principle in this method is “No Translation is allowed”.
Direct method is also called as natural method because it uses naturalistic principles of language learning (Jack C. Richard and Theodore S. Rodger: 1992). This term also derived from the school which L Sauveur had opened in Boston in the late 1860s. Sauveur and other believers in the Natural Method argued that a foreign language could be taught without translation or the use of the learner’s native tongue if meaning was conveyed directly through demonstration and action. According to Franke, a language could best be taught by using it actively in the classroom.
In fact, the direct method receives its name from the fact that meaning is to be conveyed directly in the target language through the use of demonstration and visual aids, with no recourse to the students’ native language (Diller 1978).

Language 1 and Language 2

In the linguistics, language learning can arranging on L1, L2, and Foreign Language. Therefore, we often listen and saw the term of first language learning, second language learning, and foreign language learning. Language Learning (L1, L2, and Foreign Learning) is the interest knowledge linguistics in particular of Psycolinguistics.

The branch of linguistics especially for Psycolinguistics wants to answer two questions: how 1.anguage is produced
2. how language acquired or learned

A Second Language (L2) is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue (L1). Some languages, often called auxiliary language, are used primarly as second languages or lingual francas.
A foreign language is a language used in a country other than one's own. It is also a language not spoken in the native country of the person referred to, i.e. an English speaker living in Japan can say that Japanese is a foreign language to him or her. These two characterizations do not exhaust the possible definitions, however, and the label is occasionally applied in ways that are variously misleading or factually inaccurate.