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The Direct Method - Behaviorism?
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Shimokitazawa



Joined: 16 Aug 2009
Posts: 458
Location: Saigon, Vietnam
PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2013 8:19 am    Post subject: The Direct Method - Behaviorism? Reply with quote
Anyone here have experience using the Direct Method? If so, how does it relate to behavioristic views of learning? A co-worker was just telling me how that using Side x Side is based on behaviorism, so he refuses to use it. This lead to some discussion as to whether the Direct Method was appropriate or now in a communicative classroom.
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fluffyhamster



Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2013 7:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
I'm not sure the two (the DM and behaviourism) are logically related - it would be possible for example to use SBS in Grammar-Translation methodology, and if the DM were behaviourism then pretty much the whole of the Communicative Approach would be behaviouristic. (The DM is very much standard in CLT/ELT nowadays, and has been in vogue in western ELT generally for decades if not centuries now (behaviourism in comparison was only really in vogue for the couple of decades following WWII)).

What SBS is is controlled practice (simple contexts for grammar-based short exchanges, especially in the earlier SBS books), which is sometimes a necessary and good thing. Whether you or your colleague view that as too behaviouristic is of course up to you, but using English as the means of instruction is certainly not behaviourism ("even if" we are hoping to thereby change the students' spoken default language).
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
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Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise
PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2013 7:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
There is a logical connection. The Direct Method paved the way for Audio-Lingualism by removing reliance on L1. The latter methodology is firmly based on Behaviorist theory.
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fluffyhamster



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PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2013 8:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Sahsa wrote:
There is a logical connection. The Direct Method paved the way for Audio-Lingualism by removing reliance on L1. The latter methodology is firmly based on Behaviorist theory.

Well, "yes" ('behaviourism in comparison was only really in vogue for the couple of decades following WWII'), but given the decline of audiolingualism there is now no longer that connection (though one could argue that it is still an influence, even in CLT). If the direct methodology had been developed and promulgated more fully in civilian circles rather than/before military ones, it doubtless would've been a lot less behaviourally-inclined. That is, the connection is more historical-chance than necessarily logical~contemporary. (Ah, the benefit of hindsight and all that). Anyway, I perhaps should've added 'nowadays' after the 'logically related' in the first sentence of my previous post to help clarify things.
.
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fluffyhamster



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PostPosted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 12:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
FWIW, here's a very interesting interview with one of the authors of SBS:
http://www.eltnews.com/features/interviews/2003/12/interview_with_steven_j_molins.html
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Solar Strength



Joined: 12 Jul 2005
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Location: Bangkok, Thailand
PostPosted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 2:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
fluffyhamster wrote:
Sahsa wrote:
There is a logical connection. The Direct Method paved the way for Audio-Lingualism by removing reliance on L1. The latter methodology is firmly based on Behaviorist theory.

Well, "yes" ('behaviourism in comparison was only really in vogue for the couple of decades following WWII'), but given the decline of audiolingualism there is now no longer that connection (though one could argue that it is still an influence, even in CLT). If the direct methodology had been developed and promulgated more fully in civilian circles rather than/before military ones, it doubtless would've been a lot less behaviourally-inclined. That is, the connection is more historical-chance than necessarily logical~contemporary. (Ah, the benefit of hindsight and all that). Anyway, I perhaps should've added 'nowadays' after the 'logically related' in the first sentence of my previous post to help clarify things.
.


Wasn't audiolingualism the method used with the U.S. Military, not the Direct Method? Berlitz based their instruction on the Direct Method. My understanding is that with the Direct Method, according to a friend a Berlitz, use of L1 is forbidden. They also use a lot of drills and questions, etc.

Last edited by Solar Strength on Thu Jun 13, 2013 8:47 am; edited 1 time in total
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 2:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Yes, it was. Hence all the drilling, and its other name, 'Army Method'.
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fluffyhamster



Joined: 13 Mar 2005
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 3:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Solar Strength wrote:
Wasn't audiolingualism the method used with the U.S. Military, not the Direct Method? Berlitz based their instruction on the Direct Method.

The Direct Method, according to a friend a Berlitz, told me that use of L1 is forbidden. They also use a lot of drills and questions, etc.

I'm just curious how Behaviorism underpins the methodology.


Yes, "the" DM (Berlitz etc) predates audiolingualism, but as we've established, L2-only was also a feature in the army's language training (see e.g. Passin's Encounter with Japan), hence it was also a DM of sorts (and you'd be hard-pressed to notice much difference in the descriptions of methodology given in the definitions for 'direct method' and 'audiolingual method' in Richards & Schmidt's Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics, for example). The presumably more extensive drills, push-ups for failure, mim-mem methods etc used by the military then made things explicitly ("much much more") behavioural, and by then (and only by then) there were obviously the theories of Skinner to allude to to lend a veneer, b