Job Discussion Forums

[Shimokitazawa]

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.

[fluffyhamster]

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).

[Sashadroogie]

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.

[fluffyhamster]

[fluffyhamster]

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

[Solar Strength]

[Sashadroogie]

Yes, it was. Hence all the drilling, and its other name, 'Army Method'.

[fluffyhamster]

[Sashadroogie]

Berlitz's Direct Method method, as it were, features heavily teacher-centred question and response, controlled practice simulations/roleplay, little tolerance of error on the learners' part, and involves repetiton, repetiton, repetiton - repeatedly. It is more restrictive than just an English-only policy. So it does seem to incorporate some behaviourist principles as well.

Maybe I am mistaken, but I cannot see much difference between it and the Callan Method...

[tttompatz]

why is this in the newbie forum?

[coledavis]

If you mean that the Direct Method is related to behaviourism because people focus on doing things and learning systematically, then all right to a point. However, behaviourism as a psychological approach is a bit more explicit than that, in that it focuses on (not exclusively):

- cumulative learning (cf B.F. Skinner, particularly related to education
- positive reinforcement or other contingencies consequent on behavior (read educational performance) - again, particularly read Skinner
- association (see Pavlov, Watson) - other methods including some of the touchy-feely ones could be said to derive from this
- measured (tested) results, to see if the technique works

So it may derive to some extent, but they are not necessarily the same thing. Some people's views of behaviourism are rather narrow.

[fluffyhamster]

@Sasha, Cole: I'm planning to dig out e.g. my Howatt (History of ELT) to double-check if the original DM (of Berlitz himself, and in his earlier schools) sounded that much different to how "it" might've then been following the advent of behaviourism and audiolingualism (the success - and that is what it was, again read stuff like Passin - of the army training programmes must've had some influence on the "other" method and methods generally). But flying forwards in time again there has been enough of a cognitive switch and influence from Chomskyan and then more sociolinguistic linguistics that people (especially civilians) just aren't that comfortable with the B word, despite it having got something of an unfair rap (theories about training dogs and pigeons have always been a bit different from training people, not least because people can and indeed do have to answer back in language training, and eventually move beyond the training. That is, there has and always will be something cognitive going on in there with humans, even if some theorists if not the teachers have seemed uninterested in that).

[coledavis]

Just as people are knee-jerk negative to behaviourism, then they are also ridiculously positive about Chomsky. I am sorry, but the most recent evidence on how children learn language (making errors which are logical, based on what they know before they are fully schooled in grammar) is far closer to Skinner's idea of cumulative learning than LAD or any of these other cool but not very applicable constructivist theories.

As for the shift to 'cognitive' psychology, it should be remembered that this sprung out of behavioral psychology and, according to behaviourists, is merely compartmentalising certain types of behaviour. Consider for example cognitive therapy techniques such as thought-stopping (to ward off depressive and other negative modes of thinking); these essentially treat thinking as types of behaviour.

[coledavis]

And while Skinner's experimental work was of course performed on rats and pigeons (I've done some positive reinforcement experiments in my time), you will find that many of the 'schedules of reinforcement' are embedded in very human activities.

Have you noticed how gambling machines work? To really hook the punter, they use intermittent reinforcement (every now and again, unpredictably, you win). This is the most powerful method for long-term positive reinforcement and works very well with humans.

I could go on, but this is a teaching forum rather than an undergraduate psychology class.

[Solar Strength]

I just watched two lesson, one Audiolingual and the other a Berlitz Direct Method class, and I have a tough time distinguishing the difference between the two methodologies. I mean, if you want to watch a lesson an TPR and Task-Based learning or Communicative Approach, the differences are obvious. But not with the Audiolingual method or Direct Method.