What Is the Direct Method of Teaching English?

DM was developed in the late 19th century by language teachers who saw the language classroom as too often a place where students simply memorized translations of words and conjugations of verbs. If you’re like me, you’re nodding your head now—we’ve all been in that classroom!

While still in use today by organizations like Berlitz, and supported by research that shows its effectiveness, it was never widely adopted because it was perceived as being more challenging for teachers to use (and hence requiring more teacher training to get off the ground).

It actually isn’t that hard to use DM, but like all good teaching methods it requires well-planned lessons (but hey, you’re here in the first place because you’re a dedicated teacher who puts a lot of time and effort into planning great lessons, right?).

DM was developed by studying how children learn their native tongue.Think about how you learned to speak your first language. You listened to adults and older children, then started trying out language, using trial and error, action and reaction, to develop your speaking ability. This is the core idea behind DM—to replicate this natural language learning process.

• Uses Only the Target Language. The first principle of DM is that we only ever use the language we’re teaching. The teacher never translates for students or lets them use a language other than English in the classroom.

• Students Figure Out Rules Themselves. Because we aren’t translating for our students, we’re introducing language in context through action and interaction. We’re pushing students to think in English and to develop their own understanding of the rules of the language. For example, by hearing the teacher say “he is a student” to Ricardo, and “they are students” to Chris and Natalia, students start learning verb conjugations without creating diagrams or having patterns laid out for them.

• Highly Active. Because DM doesn’t allow anyone in the classroom to fall back on their first language, it demands that teachers and students alike are active—acting, moving, drawing, pointing and touching—as they explore and learn English. This is also part of what makes it a natural process—think of how much listening and acting small children engage in before they begin speaking and using language.

• Focuses on Speaking. Again, because it’s a natural method, DM typically focuses more on speaking and listening than on reading and writing. Having said this, there’s plenty of room for reading and writing in the DM classroom, as I’ll discuss later.

Strengths of the Direct Method

Okay, so now we know what the Direct Method is. The next question to answer is this: “Why should we use it?” 

The following list of strengths should give you a good sense of why it’s worth using, and when it’s most appropriate to use it.

• Natural Learning. The first strength of DM comes from the fact that it’s a natural method; because it replicates how we learned our native language, it feels more intuitive to our students and allows them to learn English more deeply than other methods. (Note that for students who haven’t been taught in this way, it can be disorienting at first. Trust me, after a few days they’ll get used to it. This doesn’t mean that they won’t complain—DM often demands more of your students than traditional teaching.)

• Improved Pronunciation. Because of its focus on speaking and listening, students who learn through DM typically develop improved pronunciation, along with confidence in speaking.

• Thinking in English. In classrooms that allow students to switch back and forth between languages, thinking in English is discouraged; in contrast, a classroom that immerses students in English pushes them to do more thinking in English.

• Real-world Skills. Although reading and writing are important skills, particularly in school, in daily life we simply speak and listen more than we read and write. It’s easy to see why speaking and listening are more important skills when we consider how many people have been able to find success despite being illiterate, versus how difficult life can be for those who cannot speak or hear.

DM isn’t perfect for teaching all terms and concepts.

Typically DM is easier to use with lower-level students, and becomes more challenging when tackling more abstract vocabulary and complex grammar at higher levels.