Advantages and Disadvantages of Direct Method

There are some advantages of using direct method :

• The students are motivated to understand and pronounce words or sentences in foreign language that thought by the teacher, especially when the teacher uses media/ realia.
• The students get more experience in speaking foreign language even only simple sentences at first.
• The students are trained to speak in foreign language well.
  

There are some disadvantages of using direct method :

• The weakness in the Direct Method is its assumption that a second language can be learnt in exactly the same way as a first, when in fact the conditions under which a second language is learnt are very different
• Teaching and learning process will be passive if the teacher can not motivate the students to participate the class discussion.
• It is hard to applied in Indonesia since several teachers in Indonesia are not expert in speaking English.
  

Example
The teacher explains new vocabulary about part of our body.
S/he can use learning media to attract the students and to improve their understanding. S/he can use realia or even their own part of body to emphasize the explanation.