A compare-contrast essay on the Direct Method, the Audio-lingual Method and the Situational Language Teaching

This essay will focus on compare and contrast between the Direct Method, the Audio-lingual Method, and the Situational Language Teaching. To discuss these methods we look through in the point of view of teachers and learners, activities, usage of different types of materials and theory of language and learning.

In terms of the theory of learning, these three methods use different principal. The Direct Method is also known as the ‘oral’ or ‘natural’ method. This approach uses inductive language. There is a direct relation between form and meaning. L2 learning is similar to L1 acquisition. There is direct exposure to the target language Learning occurs naturally. The Audio-Lingual Method Learning is based on the principles of Behaviorism. Habit Formation is essential. Rules are induced by examples. Explicit grammar rules are not given. Learning is inductive. Habit formation is actualized by means of repetitions and other mechanical drills. And The Situational Language Teaching is Focus on vocabulary and reading which one of the most salient traits of SLT is.  In fact, mastery of a set of high-frequency vocabulary items is believed to lead to good skills of reading. An analysis of English and a classification of its prominent grammatical structures into sentence patterns also called situational tables, are believed to help learners internalize grammatical rules.

In Contrast, the theory of language, each language is unique. No other language should interfere when learning a language. The Direct Method uses language for an oral purpose. The focus is on good pronunciation, spontaneous use of the language, little grammar analysis without translation. In The Audio-Lingual Method, language is based on descriptive linguistics. Every language has its own distinctive power. The system of language learning is comprised of several different levels. There is a natural order of skills like 1. Listening, 2. Speaking, 3.Reading, 4. Writing. Everyday speech and oral skills are important. Perfect pronunciation is required. Language is primarily for Oral Communication. And in The Situational Language Teaching is a type of behaviorist habit-learning theory. The approach gives primacy to the processes over the conditions of learning. The behaviorist theory of learning is based on the principle of habit formation. Mistakes are banned so as to avoid bad habit formation. Following the premises of behaviorism, a teacher presents language first orally after then in the written form.

In The Direct Method, the teacher introduces learners to phonetic symbols before they see standard writing examples. Sometimes they use visual aids to teach vocabulary. The teacher usually directs the interactions but he/she is not as dominant as in GTM. Sometimes acts like a partner of the students. In contrast between The Audio-Lingual Method and the Situational Language Teaching, the teacher is like an orchestra leader. S/he directs and controls the language behavior of the students. The teacher is a good model of the target language, especially for pronunciation and other oral skills.

Students play different roles in these methods. In the Direct Method, students are active participants. Sometimes pair works take place. Even the teacher takes roles in activities. Then in the Audio-Lingual Method, students are imitators of the teacher as a perfect model of the target language or the native speakers in the audio recordings. And in the Situational Language Teaching, at the initial stage, the learners are required simply to listen and repeat what the teacher says and to respond to questions and commands. They are likely to capitulate to undesirable behaviors unless successfully manipulated by the teacher. Later more active participation is encouraged.

The Direct Method uses some techniques as classroom activities like- Reading aloud, question and answer exercise, self-correction, conversation practice, fill-in-the-blank exercise, dictation, drawing for listening comprehension and paragraph writing. But it is not an easy methodology to use in a classroom situation especially it requires a small classroom. The bases of audio-lingual classroom practices are dialogues and drills. Dialogues are used for repetition and memorization. This automatic approach also focuses on various kinds of drill and pattern-practice exercise. Situational Language Teaching uses the practice techniques employed generally consist of guided repetition and substitution activities, including chorus repetition, dictation, drills and controlled oral-based reading and writing tasks. Other oral-practice techniques are sometimes used, including pair practice and group work.

Grammar is taught inductively in the Direct Method. Examples and drills are given and students are expected to discover and acquire the rules. Drills like chain drill, yes question, no question, or question are used to help students induce the rule. Explicit rules are not provided in the Audio-lingual classroom. Students induce the rules through examples and drills. Students acquire grammar by being exposed to patterns through mechanical drills. And SLT Grammar teaching involves in a situational presentation of new sentence patterns and drills to practice the patterns.

The situational method has an important objective proficiency in the four basic language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. But in the direct method Speaking, listening, reading and writing are important skills. Especially speaking and listening are emphasized. Vocabulary is over grammar. In contrast, the audio-lingual method omits those as objectives but keeps the two objectives common to both methods: accurate pronunciation and grammar, quick and accurate speech responses.

To teach the Direct Method situational and topical syllabuses are used. Audio-lingual is a linguistic or structure-based approach to language teaching. Grammar points and sentence patterns in the structural syllabus usage to teach it. Situational Language Teaching syllabus is designed upon a word list and structural activities.

To evaluate students for the Direct Method is asked to students to use the language, not to demonstrate their knowledge about the language. Students' ability to use the language is tested. Not about language, the language itself. In Audio-lingual, discrete-point tests are used. Each item (question) should focus on only one point of the language at a time. Appropriate verb form in a sentence and set phrases are memorized with a focus on intonation. And in SLT, teachers use different types of drills to evaluate students.

There are many differences as well as similarities between Direct, Audio-lingual, and SLT. In fact, however, SLT was a development of the earlier Direct Method and does not have the strong ties to linguistics and behavioral psychology that characterize Audio-lingual.

                                                                                                               

Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Women in the Victorian era

Tess of the D’Urbervilles is considered to be a remarkable tragedy and one of the most influential and well-received books in world literature for its tragic portrayal of  Tess, the protagonist, a girl, intelligent, natural and good, destroyed by the operation of cruel and indefensible social attitudes and conventions of Victorian phenomena. In the novel, Hardy portrays a poor, innocent, and country girl who is victimized by the combined forces of Victorian patriarchal society— the injustice of social law, the hypocrisy of social prejudice and the inequality of male dominance, and demonstrates his profound sympathy for Tess, symbolic of rural women who were mercilessly ravaged in the male-dominated world. Tess’s tragic fate has evoked generations of readers’ sympathy and aroused their interests in her twisted life journey full of setbacks and mishaps.

Tess’s tragic fate is closely connected with two men’s betrayal and mastery. The bourgeois hypocrisy and the male dominance incarnated in Angel and Alec co-operate in driving Tess to destruction. In the conventional world with a severe view on virginity and chastity, the sense of self-guilt and self-reproach haunts her through her life journey. After the sexual violation, the rigid society gives her no chance for regeneration. As Hardy suggests in the novel, patriarchal society, the habitat of the heroine, is the root of her tragedy, shaping her miserable fate. He indicates that Tess is the example of the destructive effect of society’s pressures and conventions upon a naturally pure and unstained country girl and that Alec and Angel are personifications of destructive attitudes towards women.

Hardy witnesses the injustice of social law and the ill effect of male dominance over women and dramatizes them in the novel through the miserable life of Tess who is crushed by the comprehensive vicious power of society. In the perspective of the conventional world, Tess is an unforgivable sinner whose “terrible sins” are doomed; however, Hardy, cherishing “a thousand pities” for Tess, calls her a pure woman. This is the irony against the hypocritical conventions of the Victorian Age, which restricted man’s nature to such a large extent as it oppressed people, especially women, who were trodden at the bottom of society. Tess is driven to offend the social law, but she responds to the natural law, to her nature. Her sexual involvement is normal in natural law, but she has to face the prejudice of severe social codes and respond with rebellion. Tess is naturally pure if she is socially “degraded”. Hardy insists that Tess is victimized by rigid social law, hypocritical prejudice, and men’s narrow-minded attitude towards gender, marriage, and chastity. Social prejudice is the decisive factor which tortures Tess and gives her no chance to regenerate from her setback and designates Tess as a decadent” woman, leaving her no place to live anew. She is rejected by society and cannot regain respect from others and resume her social status. As an outcast of Christian society, she is bound to be destroyed.

Tess’s misfortune is, in a sense, related to male dominance and the concept of male superiority. Her unbearable pressures come from male dominance personified in Alec and Angel in the male-centered society, where everything complies with the male wish and man-favored principles. The male mastery phenomenon can find expression in the novel when Tess indifferently tells Alec after his seduction, “See how you’ve mastered me!” and her complaint to her mother also helps apprehend men’s manipulation over women, “Why didn’t you tell me there was danger in men-folk?” It is also reflected in Alec’s warning Tess, “Remember, my lady, I was your master once; I will be your master again”. In a society where men enjoy superiority and privilege, women are no doubt living at the mercy of men. They must submit to men's wish otherwise, they will be punished by the social law and tortured by public opinions. Tess’s miserable fate is nothing but a terrible game played on females by males. Her fierce protest against male-dominated social law leads her to her final execution.

Alec, the archetypal seducer in Victorian melodrama, after his violation of Tess’s virginity, does not realize his sin; what’s more, he blames Tess for tempting him with her beauty. He does the wrong and shifts it onto the victim. The social consensus does not condemn or punish Alec. Instead, it disdains and hunts Tess wherever she goes. The innocent pay for the guilty; the sinned suffers for the sinner. Moreover, Alec, the real sinner, is later converted to be a preacher instead of being criticized and punished by religious consensus. The sinner can become a saint but the innocent is deprived of the right of being a normal member of the society. The male sinner loses nothing and he lives as he used to, safe and sound; what’s more, he later becomes a preacher publicizing God’s edict, but the female sinned is surrounded by discrimination and rebuke from society.

Alec and Angel serve as the embodiment of men’s inhumanity towards women. Alec bestially violates Tess by sexual attacks; Angel cruelly tortures her by his priggish rejection. Alec’s barbarism and Angel’s hypocrisy, interdependent on each other, are the two irresistible forces driving Tess to her dead end. If Alec physically ruins Tess by depriving her of her virginity, Angel spiritually destroys her by depriving her of her courage for life and pursuit for love. Angel does not believe in the primacy of rank, social status, and belief, which clashes with traditional English morals. However, he cannot completely break with his clergy family and its influence. It is this ambiguity that attracts dairy girls and simultaneously hurts them, especially Tess who is the biggest victim. Angel’s rejection gives her a much harder blow than Alec’s sexual violence.

On the wedding night, after their confessions of their pasts, Tess forgives his romantic dissipation with a woman in London, but Angel refuses to forgive Tess for her “disgraceful” past. Angel’s refusal is in striking contrast with Tess’s generous forgiveness. They commit the same behavior but receive different consequences. Angel’s desertion clearly exemplifies the “double moral standard” that prevails in Victorian society in relation to the sexual lives and feelings of women. In any sexual involvement beyond marriage, it is women who always pay a price Alec’s sexual violation destroys Tess’s virginity, which means so much to a girl in Victorian society that she will be pushed to the prejudicial mire if she loses it out of wedlock.

In the novel, readers can find that due to her first fall—sexual involvement with Alec, Tess is regarded as an unconventional and unrestrained “fallen” woman and despised and belittled wherever she goes. When she returns to Marlott, various censures attack her. In the church, “the people who had turned their heads turned them again as the service proceeded; and at last, observing her they whispered to each other”. She knows what they gossip about and feels so greatly hurt that she decides she will go to church no more. In the field, Tess still can’t escape from the gossip about her sexual deviation and her baby—the fruit of sin. A cloud of guilt envelopes her. Under the great pressure of social prejudice, Tess is driven to leave home to try her fortune drifting from place to place. She cannot escape the censure and condemnation, which company her like her own shadow. She is hunted everywhere. Tess cannot survive the deadly disaster from her unconventional conduct; moreover, her family is also involved in cruel punishment.

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It is Angel’s prig selfishness and male superiority that plunges her into a dire situation, where she is obliged to fall into Alec’s trap again. Misfortunes in Brazil crush his dream and call him back to reality; instructions from others help him realize his egoism and unfairness towards Tess. It is not until too late that he returns and forgives Tess, but it can hardly help the situation. Tess is already on the verge of destruction; his return only intensifies and quickens her death.  After Tess stabs Alec from her accumulated grief and grievance for being ill-treated by him she was sentenced to death by hanging by the protectors of Victorian society, a society where only the woman sins and only the woman pays.

Tess epitomizes a country girl who is ruined by social prejudice and male dominance centered on the “double moral standard” of sexuality applied to men and women in the late nineteenth century. Like a straw on the torrent of ethic- prejudice, she is easily engulfed by the evil power of the society. She is the victim of narrow-mindedness toward the concepts of chastity and virginity, and she is also the sacrifice of male dominance in patriarchal Victorian society.

Representation of Women in the Victorian Era

    “The Comparative analysis between Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Wuthering Heights”

     The way women are portrayed in Victorian novels clearly raises questions about the search of their identity. Indeed, they are all faced with the same issue: their position in society, the way they react to it and what comes from it. The comparative analysis between Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte about the portrayal of a woman in the Victorian era is the topic.

     In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, the main character Tess helps to portray that- men can easily dominate women, exerting a power over them linked primarily to their maleness. Sometimes this command is purposeful, in the man’s full knowledge of his exploitation, as when Alec acknowledges how bad he is for seducing Tess for his own momentary pleasure. Alec’s act of abuse, the most life-altering event that Tess experiences in the novel, is clearly the most serious instance of male domination over a female. But there are other, less blatant examples of women’s passivity toward dominant men. When Angel reveals that he prefers Tess then Tess’s friend Retty attempts suicide and her friend Marian becomes an alcoholic, which makes clear that their earlier schoolgirl-type crushes on Angel seem totally disturbing. This devotion is not merely fanciful love, but an unhealthy obsession. These girls appear utterly dominated by a desire for a man who, we are told explicitly, does not even realize that they are interested in him. This sort of unconscious domination of males over women is perhaps even more unsettling than Alec’s outward and self-conscious cruelty. Even Angel’s love for Tess, as pure and gentle as it seems, dominates her in an unhealthy way. Angel substitutes an idealized picture of Tess’s country purity for the real-life woman that he continually refuses to get to know. When Angel calls Tess names like “Daughter of Nature” and “Artemis,” we feel that he may be denying her true self in favor of a mental image that he prefers. Thus, her identity and experiences are suppressed, albeit unknowingly. This pattern of male domination is finally reversed with Tess’s murder of Alec, in which, for the first time in the novel, a woman takes active steps against a man. Of course, this act only leads to even greater suppression of a woman by men, when the crowd of male police officers arrests Tess at Stonehenge. Nevertheless, for just a moment, the accepted pattern of submissive women bowing to dominant men is interrupted, and Tess’s act seems heroic.

In Wuthering Heights, the two main female characters are portrayed slightly differently, but overall both depend on a fatherly figure and are at the mercy of Heathcliff. Though the “old” Catherine (hence referred to as Catherine) and her daughter do struggle to be free, they do not really succeed, as they are masochistic (Catherine feels like she has to apologize for her death and like it’s all her fault, as surely Heathcliff is the most suffering and innocent one ‘sarcasm’) and vulnerable. They are unable to stand their grounds (and when they try to, as Isabella did, they end up in a worse place) and are victims of male figures all around them. They must obey the rules and follow what is socially acceptable. Catherine is at first a free spirit but is “tamed” little by little. Her first change in becoming “socially acceptable” occurs when she spends five weeks at the Linton’s house. That already gets her into trouble, as it leads Heathcliff to be angry and aggravates his issues. She is no longer the girl who would run around wild and free; now, she is confined to suffocating and following the sense of propriety of the Victorian era. The most important roles of women of that era were that of a wife and a mother. The “young” Catherine (hence referred to as Cathy) follows her mother’s footsteps, but is offered what seems to be a second chance. She is faced with the same types of challenges, but because her journey was the opposite of her mother and she gets a happier ending not because of her own smartness, but only out of luck. Even as both girls had a strong personality and should’ve been able to fight for their own rights, Catherine was alienated enough to give them up and try to follow her obligations as a dutiful daughter, sister, wife, and mother. The biggest raggedy of this is that she did not even succeed, and she had to give her own identity for nothing. Cathy who was also headed to be a victim because she had no power over the men who controlled her, only managed to be more successful because they all died one by one. In Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte also portrays how men were dominating towards women in that particular era.

     Although womens' power is established but the male dominating issue, identity crisis, obstacles in society all come from the Victorian era to nowadays. Thomas Hardy and Emily Bronte both became successful to portray the position of women in society in that era. And both portray the miserable life of women in that society and class bear witness at that time. Wuthering Heights is a gothic novel and the writer creates a whole version of women together. On the other hand, the writer of Tess of the d’Urbervilles creates feminist interpretations. In spite of them, death was their final destination at the end of the story in both cases.

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References:

https://www.google.com/

Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Wuthering Heights

Roles of Women in the Victorian Era