presentation practice production model

What is ‘Presentation, Practice, Production’ (PPP)?

And how can i best use it in my classroom.

Presentation, practice, production (PPP) is a lesson structure, a way to order activities in your lessons.

Although quite old and heavily criticised over the years, PPP is probably the most commonly used lesson structure in teaching English to foreign learners today. It’s also still widely taught to new teachers and seen on initial teacher training courses like the CELTA and CertTESOL.

Most course books that you’re likely to use will structure their chapters in ways similar or the same as PPP, meaning that you’ll get a lot of exposure to this method.

As the name suggests, there are three stages to this lesson structure, which we’ll look at now.

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The ‘presentation’ stage

This is where the language is introduced, or ‘presented’ to the learners, usually by introducing a context or situation. For example, you could:

Tell or act out a short story or anecdote ( “I woke up this morning with a nasty cold… AHHH-CHOOO! I went to the doctor and…”)

Play a short audio clip

Show a clip from a movie or TV show.

Show objects you’ve brought in (e.g. newspaper cuttings, plane tickets, hobby materials)

The aim is to ensure students understand the context and get them thinking about it. You could elicit ideas or suggestions from students, get them to talk to each other about what they know or think about the situation, etc. This also helps them start to remember the language and vocabulary they already know about the topic (or ‘activate the schemata’, if you want the fancy term for it).

The ‘practice’ stage

The ‘practice’ stage is when students use the language in a controlled way. This stage is sometimes divided into two — a controlled practice and a freer practice. Again, among many things, you could get students to:

Drill sentences or sounds, chorally or individually.

Substitution drill in pairs

Sentence matching activities

Gap-fill exercises

Pair work asking and answering questions

The aim of this stage is accuracy . Error correction is important in this stage, so monitor the students closely and take time to correct errors immediately. A delayed error correction section after the activity would be useful for target language errors that seem to be common.

The ‘production’ stage

The ‘production’ stage is where the language is used more openly. Things like:

Communication tasks

Collaborative tasks

Discussion activities

The focus of this stage is using the language as fluently and naturally as possible , as students would do outside of the classroom.

Theory behind Presentation, Practice, Production

This is where PPP gets criticised. It started in the 1960s, and language learning theory has developed considerably since then. Academics who study second language acquisition get annoyed at how PPP doesn’t tick any of the boxes for how we’re supposed to learn a language and yet is still so widespread.

Some learning assumptions behind presentation, practice, production are:

Students should be told the grammar rules and then practice them (a deductive approach).

Language learning is a skill like any other and should be practised as such.

There should be a high level of teacher control, slowly handed over to learners as the lesson progresses.

Language is a series of items that can be learned in sequence.

The target language should be practised by removing unnecessary language to help focus.

All of these have been shown that this isn’t how we best learn languages (in fact, the opposite is largely true!).

However, it isn’t all bad. Here’s my opinion on the advantages and disadvantages of PPP:

It’s easy to learn for new teachers.

It’s very flexible.

It’s easy to plan for and has a logical progression.

It works for most types of classes, including larger classes.

Most course books use this or a similar method to structure their lessons and chapters.

Disadvantages

Research shows that it may not be the best way to teach/learn a language.

Weaker learners may overuse the target language from the practice session, so it sounds unnatural.

Learners may not know how to use the target language in different contexts.

It can be boring if used repeatedly for higher-level students.

Thoughts on Presentation, Practice, Production

Academics are often far removed from the classroom and the real world, studying the individual phenomenon in isolation.

I’ve often seen a light bulb moment for students whilst teaching PPP (although one could argue that it’s not strict PPP, and it’d be hard to isolate the teaching method from other variables). Teaching over a period of time with this method, you do see students improve. Consider also that it’s not done in isolation — you should be getting your learners to interact in English naturally and read extensively outside of class, for starters.

Presentation, practice, production works. Maybe not as well as something like task-based learning (TBL), but TBL takes longer to plan and implement, which becomes very difficult when your teaching hours are high.

Sure, so it might not be theoretically perfect, but it does work.

How to adapt the PPP method

Also, I believe it has evolved from the ‘traditional’ PPP approach described above. Here are some ways you can adapt the classic PPP structure:

Spend more time in the presentation stage eliciting.

Turn the deductive aspect of explicit grammar instruction into an inductive aspect (so learners have to figure out the patterns themselves).

Add collaborative tasks during the practice stage, which learners must use the target language to complete successfully.

Include meta-learning strategies so students can learn how to learn.

Include more incidental language throughout the class so learners hear language in a more natural context.

Change the final stage into a task, such as you’d find in task-based learning .

These changes turn PPP into something else, a blended approach that addresses many of the criticisms of PPP.

Other structures have sought to improve upon the model of PPP. Variants include ESA (engage, study, activate) and CAP (context, analysis, practice)

However, the simplicity of PPP and its notoriety have kept it the most widely used model. I doubt it’s going away any time soon.

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EnglishPost.org

PPP Framework in Teaching: Presentation, Practice and Production

The PPP Teaching Framework is a model to describe the typical stages of language teaching lesson.

The PPP Teaching framework consist of four main stages:  Warm-up, Presentation, Practice and Production and is used to teach speaking and writing lessons.

There is a variation when we use this framework to teach Listening and Reading skills .

The framework that we use to teach passive skills is the PDP framework which stands for Pre, While and Post

Let’s check all that you need to know to use the PPP Framework correctly

Table of Contents

PPP Framework: Criticism

Stages of the ppp framework, presentation, important considerations when planning lessons, considerations when teaching listening and reading, how to teach listening, how to teach reading , questions to ask yourself when creating ppp or pdp lessons, short quiz: how much did you learn, more on english language teaching.

This framework for teaching language classes is often criticized because:

• It forces students to use certain grammar structures and vocabulary.
• Since it forces students to use a target structure and vocabulary, this reduces the learner opportunities to use the language in spontaneous ways.

These are the stages of the PPP Framework:

• It’s an activity at the start of the class to warm up the learners. They tend to be short, dynamic activities.
• It is recommended that the warm- up is related to the topic studied during that class. 
• In my opinion, the most important thing about a dynamic warm-up is that you continue with dynamic activities  during the presentation, practice and production stage.

In the presentation stage, teacher introduces:

You can introduce the vocabulary and grammar in two different ways.

• Deductively : This involves the learners being given a general rule, which is then applied to specific language examples
• Inductively:   This approach starts with examples and asks learners to find rules

Important things to take into account:

• Choose the vocabulary and grammar structures necessary for your students to succeed.
• Don’t introduce vocabulary and grammar that won’t be used during the lesson.
• Try not to introduce lots of words. Keep new words to a maximum of 20 per lesson.
• Get students involved in the presentation of the vocabulary and grammar so you can reduce teacher talking time and encourage learner-centered instruction

The practice stage aims to provide opportunities for learners to use the target structure and vocabulary used during class.

This stage is also controlled practiced since the tasks prepared by the teacher have  controlled results.

Teacher should try to use the vocabulary and structures during the presentation stage for obvious reasons:

• What’s the point of introducing vocabulary and grammar you aren’t going to use?
• How can you expect students to succeed if you use different vocabulary and grammar to the one you taught in the presentation stage?

All meaningful activities which give students the opportunity to practice the language more freely.

It  is impossible to be wrong if:

• Your activities encourage peer to peer interaction.
• Students are taught grammar inductively.
•  Your lesson is made up of task that maximize student talking time.
• Students stand up and talk to others.
• There are games and activities that are fun and meaningful.
• Your scaffolding is good because students can do what you want them to do.

The Presentation, Practice and Production is usually used to teach speaking, writing or grammar.

If you want to focus on listening and reading, you have to take into account the PDP Framework

This framework is an approach to teaching reading and listening skills lessons.   

PDP means Pre- During (while) and Post

The basic idea is:

• Try to help students to know a little about what they’re going to read or listen before they read or hear it
• Give them a reason to read or listen by setting questions or other reading listening tasks
• Ask them to do something with the information they get from the reading or listening. 

The Framework for teaching listening is called Pre, While and Post.

Check out these resources to understand more about this framework

• 12 Types of Pre-Listening Activities
• 12 Examples of While-Listening Activities
• 10 Types of Post-Listening Activities for the ESL Classroom.

The Framework for teaching reading is called Pre, While and Post

• Stages for Teaching Reading
• 15 Examples of Pre-Reading Activities
• 10 Examples of While-Reading Activities
• 10 Examples of Post-Reading Activities
• Making Reading Communicative

These are some important questions that you should ask yourself when creating a PPP or PDP Lesson.

• Are the activities of the PPP lesson plan linked to each other?
• Are the activities of the PDP lesson plan linked to each other?
• Do the activities belong to the right stage of the lesson? For example, is the pre-reading activity an actual pre-reading activity?
• Is the lesson plan based on reality and not on impossible and unrealistic expectations
• Is the evaluation strategy measuring what you need to measure?
• Are activities engaging to the learner?

These are some statements that you should analyze and assign to a category of the PPP Framework

The categories being: Presentation (A), Practice (B) and Production (C)

• Teacher directs the activities during this stage ( )
• Teacher provides feedback to students ( )
• Activities include drills and multiple choice exercises ( )
• Students produce oral and written texts ( )
• Teacher uses visual aids to demonstrate a situation ( )
• Teacher describes grammar rules ( )
• Activities include oral presentations by the students ( )
• The teacher doesn’t necessarily intervene in this stage ( )
• Language is presented in context ( )
• Exercises in this stage can be productive or receptive ( )

I hope that you found everything that you were looking for about the PPP Framework

These are some posts with more ideas and information to teach English

• 5 Challenges English Language Learners Face
• 10 Characteristics of Teacher-Centered Instruction
• The Most Effective Classroom Seating Arrangements
• 15 Awesome ESL Games and Activities

ESL Classroom Activities: Dictogloss

• Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching

I am Jose Manuel, English professor and creator of EnglishPost.org, a blog whose mission is to share lessons for those who want to learn and improve their English

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PPP TEFL Teaching Methodology

What is presentation, practice and production (ppp).

During your  SEE TEFL certification course  you will become more familiar with an established  methodology for teaching English as a foreign language  known as 3Ps or PPP – presentation, practice, production. The PPP method could be characterized as a common-sense approach to teaching as it consists of 3 stages that most people who have learnt how to do anything will be familiar with.

The first stage is the presentation of an aspect of language in a context that students are familiar with, much the same way that a swimming instructor would demonstrate a stroke outside the pool to beginners.

The second stage is practice, where students will be given an activity that gives them plenty of opportunities to practice the new aspect of language and become familiar with it whilst receiving limited and appropriate assistance from the teacher. To continue with the analogy, the swimming instructor allowing the children to rehearse the stroke in the pool whilst being close enough to give any support required and plenty of encouragement.

The final stage is production where the students will use the language in context, in an activity set up by the teacher who will be giving minimal assistance, like the swimming instructor allowing his young charges to take their first few tentative strokes on their own.

Advantages of the PPP (3Ps) Method

As with any well-established methodology, PPP has its critics and a couple of relatively new methodologies are starting to gain in popularity such as  TBL (task based learning)  and  ESA (engage, study, activate) . However, even strong advocates of these new methodologies do concede that new EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers find the PPP methodology easiest to grasp, and that these new teachers, once familiar with the PPP methodology, are able to use TBL and ESA more effectively than new trainees that are only exposed to either TBL or ESA.

Indeed, there are strong arguments to suggest that experienced teachers trained in PPP use many aspects of TBL and ESA in their lessons, and that these new methodologies are in truth, the PPP methodology with some minor adjustments.

At this stage you might well be asking, It’s all very well having a clear methodology for how to teach but how do I know what to teach? The language that we call English today has absorbed a great many influences over the last thousand years or so. It has resulted in it becoming a language that can provide us with a sparklingly witty pop culture reference from a Tarantino script, 4 simple words spoken by Dr. Martin Luther King that continue to inspire us today, and something as simple and mundane as a road traffic sign.

The Job of the EFL Teacher

As EFL teachers our job is to break down this rich and complex language into manageable chunks for our students. These chunks of language are what EFL teachers call target languageWe are going to look at an example of what a piece of target language might be and then you will be given more detail on how this would be taught in a PPP lesson before finally watching three videos with some key aspects of each stage of the lesson highlighted for you.

During the course we will spend a great deal of time in the training room equipping you with the tools to employ a successful methodology for teaching the English language. You are going to get opportunities to both hone these skills in the training room and put them into practice in authentic classroom settings.

Of course you might be thinking, I don’t have any experience of being in a classroom! How on earth am I going to cope with standing at the front of a class with 20 plus pairs of eyes looking at me waiting to see what I do?

All good TEFL courses are designed to train those with no teaching experience whatsoever. We will spend the first part of the course in the training room making you familiar with all the new skills you will need whilst giving you opportunities to practice them in a supported and controlled environment.

Only after that, will you be put in an authentic classroom environment. It goes without saying that the first time anybody stands up and delivers their first lesson will be a nerve-racking experience. However, it is also an experience that mellows over time, and one that all teachers remember fondly as time goes by and they feel more at home in a classroom.

There will be some of you out there with experience of teaching in a classroom already. You may be well versed in employing many different methodologies and strategies in your classroom already, but many or most will have been with native English speaking students, or those with a near-native levels of English. This means that some of the skills we will be equipping you with may feel a little alien at first, but your experience will not prove to be a hindrance. Indeed, you will already have successful classroom management skills that can be adapted to fit a second language classroom fairly easily and other trainees on the course will benefit from your presence.

In addition, some of the skills that you will learn on the course can also be adapted to work in a classroom of native speakers too, and it is not unusual for experienced teachers to comment on exactly this after completing a good TEFL course.

Target Language in an EFL Lesson

Recall how it is the job of the EFL teacher to break down the rich tapestry of the English language into manageable bite-size chunks, suitable for study in an average study period of 50 minutes. As mentioned, we refer to these chunks as target language. As EFL teachers we will select target language that is appropriate for both the skill level and the age of the students.

The target language that you will see being presented in the videos is Likes and dislikes for 6 food items.

The teacher you will watch in the video has a clear aim, which is to ensure that:

**By the end of the lesson, students will know the names of 6 food items in English and will be able to express whether or not they like them in a spoken form by entering into a simple dialogue consisting of,

• Do you like ___?,
• Yes, I like ___., or
• No, I don’t like ___.

The six food items are ___. In short, the students will be able to name the 6 food items by the end of the lesson and tell whether they like them or not.**

Presentation – Part 1 of PPP

You may have delivered a few presentations in your time but the type of presentation we deliver in a second language classroom will differ quite a bit from those. For a start, you were speaking to proficient users of the English language about something they were, most likely, vaguely familiar with anyway. In an EFL classroom we don’t have those luxuries, so we have to be careful about the language we use and how clearly we present the new language that we wish for our students to acquire.

Let’s look at 4 key things that should be occurring in an effective second language classroom presentation:

1 – Attention in the Classroom

Learners are alert, have focused their attention on the new language and are responsive to cues that show them that something new is coming up. A simple way to ensure some of the above is if the teacher makes the target language interesting to the students.

The language will of course, be of more interest to the students if it is put into some type of context that the students are familiar with. In the case of likes and dislikes for young learners a visual associated with a facial expression will be something they can relate to. Naturally, the easier it is for them to relate to the context, the more likely they are to be interested in the language presented.

In the case of the target language for the videos a smiley face visual and a sad face visual on the whiteboard linked to the phrases I like ___. and I don’t like ___., respectively. A teacher might make exaggerated facial expressions whilst presenting these ideas to make the ideas both fun and easy to perceive for the students. This is often referred to as contextualization in EFL classrooms.

2 – Perception and Grading of Language

We want to ensure that the learners both see and hear the target language easily. So if a whiteboard is being used, it should be well organized with different colors being used to differentiate between different ideas. If images are being used, there should be no ambiguity as to what they represent and sounds made by the teacher should not only be clear, but should be repeated and the teacher needs to check the material has been perceived correctly, and can do this by asking the students to repeat the sounds he or she is making.

Learners will be bombarded with a series of images corresponding to sounds made by the teacher during the presentation stage and it is the teacher’s responsibility to ensure that they are not overloaded with information and that clear links are being made between the images and the associated sounds.

Therefore, there is an onus on the teacher not to use any unnecessary language at this stage. That is to say the grading of their language should be appropriate for the level of their students and the language they use should consist of the target language and any other essential language required to present the ideas clearly such as commands like listen! The commands should, whenever possible, be supported by clear body language.

3 – Target Language Understanding

The learners must be able to understand the meaning of the material. So in the case of likes and dislikes they perhaps need to see an image of a happy face and associate it with liking something and a sad face and associate that with disliking something.

We also need to have a way of checking if the learners did indeed, understand the material presented without asking the question, Do you understand? as this invariably triggers the response yes! from learners who are keen to please their teacher and not to lose face. We, as teachers, need to be a little more imaginative in checking our student’s understanding of material presented. Ideally, we should be checking the learners’ understanding in context. In the videos you will see, expect to see the teacher doing this during the presentation stage.

4 – Short-term Memory in the Classroom

The learners will have to retain the information from the presentation and use it further on in the lesson when we have consolidated their learning of the material and we will give them an opportunity to produce it on their own.

For the target language to be retained by the learners, it needs to be engaging and we need to consider that different learners will remember the material in different ways. Some by the way the material is seen, others by the way it is heard, and others if it is associated with a physical movement perhaps. We need to make sure our presentation has something to enable all these types of learners to retain the information.

Presentation Stage of a PPP EFL Lesson with subtitles

Practice – Part 2 of PPP

Practice can roughly be defined as the rehearsal of certain behaviors with the objective of consolidating learning and improving performance. Below are some of the characteristics of an effective language practice:

1 – Practice Validity

The practice activity must have learners rehearsing the skill or material it purports to practice. So in the case of the lesson you will view shortly, it must have the learners practicing both the food vocabulary items and the structure of the dialogue, i.e.,

• Yes, I like ___, or

2 – Pre-learning

Before we ask our learners to practice new language, we must have ensured that they have some understanding of the new language. We will have done this during the presentation stage. If they have not had the new language clearly presented to them and been aided in being given some understanding of it, then they (the learners) will not be practicing at this stage but will be going through another initial learning stage. Worse still, they will feel like they are being tested on something they haven’t been allowed to gain an understanding of.

3 – Volume (Amount) of Practice

Here, we are referring to the number of opportunities every student in the class has to practice the new language and not the level of sound. The more opportunities each student has to practice the target language, the more effective this stage of the lesson is.

So in the case of likes and dislikes, we might give the students individual worksheets where they have to fill in some part of the dialogue and the name of a food.

4 – Success Orientation

The students should have an opportunity to practice the new language and in order for this to happen they need an activity that both stretches them and is a task they can complete because of course, if it wasn’t, they wouldn’t be getting any opportunity to practice.

5 – Issuing Activity Instructions and Managing the Activity

Of course, whilst it is important to select an appropriate activity, it is equally important to issue clear and unambiguous instructions for the activity itself so all of your students are clear as to what is expected of them. We will be issuing instructions for the activity in the student’s second language so we need to make use of clear visuals to support any language we have to use and strong demonstrations of what is expected.

Managing the activity should consist of the teacher being mobile during the activity, offering praise and being on hand to show struggling students where relevant information may be found on the whiteboard.

Practice Stage of PPP EFL Lesson with subtitles

Production – Part 3 of PPP

The students have now had the target language presented to them clearly and have had an opportunity to practice it in a controlled environment. If we return to the swimming instructor analogy, it is now time to let them take their first few tentative strokes in the pool on their own with supervision and encouragement from the instructor.

As with the practice stage, we have to initiate an activity that allows them opportunities to use the target language in the classroom. In fact, the characteristics of a production stage activity are quite similar to the practice stage with one key difference and that is, student autonomy.

During this stage, the students will be producing the target language with minimal assistance from the teacher as opposed to the practice stage where the teacher will be on hand to assist students rehearse target language that has only just been presented to them.

Here are some of the key aspects of a production stage activity:

1 – Volume (Amount) of Production

As with practice, we want to create as many opportunities for our students to produce the target language albeit this time, more independently. This means we avoid activities where the students speak to the teacher as this allows limited opportunities (the students have to wait their turn before they get a chance to speak to the teacher). Instead for spoken activities, we look to get the students speaking in pairs, speaking to each other as much as possible, whilst we as the teachers go around the classroom offering minimal assistance but lots of positive reinforcement.

2 – Production Validity

Again, we should initiate an activity that allows the students to produce the target language that we presented to them and not a variation on it (although this is not strictly true with higher level students).

So, in the case of likes and dislikes for food, we should set up an activity where the students are saying, Do you like pineapple? as opposed to, What do you think of pineapples?

3 – Production Contextualization

The activity should simulate a real–life situation where they (the students) may use the target language. In the case of likes and dislikes for food this might be a menu with images of the food items or perhaps a series of images of the food items to prompt the dialogue,

• Yes, I like ____, or

Note that a successful production activity will also have aspects that set it apart from a practice activity, including:

4 – Student Autonomy

Students will be speaking, using the target language, with ideally, little or no support from the teacher.

They shouldn’t be looking things up on either the whiteboard or on any materials they have on their desk (e.g. a completed practice worksheet) so a teacher may choose to erase information from the whiteboard for this stage and the teacher might also choose to get students to clear their desks.

5 – Issuing Instructions for an Activity

As with the practice stage whilst it is important to select an appropriate activity, it is equally important to issue clear and unambiguous instructions for the activity itself so all of our students are clear as to what is expected of them. We will be issuing instructions for the activity in the student’s second language so we need to make use of clear visuals to support any language we have to use and strong demonstrations of what is expected, just as we will have done during the practice stage.

6 – Correcting Errors During the Activity

It is important that the students get as many opportunities to speak using the newly acquired language. Therefore, a teacher shouldn’t be drowning them out by speaking at length, over the top of them to correct any errors. This obviously differs from the practice where students expect the teacher to assist them as they rehearse (not produce) newly acquired language.

Clever use of body language by the teacher will enable them to be discrete in correcting errors and will allow them to offer much needed encouragement to students as well.

Production Stage of a PPP EFL Lesson with subtitles

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PPP Technique in TEFL

Presentation, practice and production.

The PPP technique in teaching is a common way to introduce students to new words and concepts. This can be especially useful in the EFL classroom. The PPP method in English teaching is a three-step lesson plan and teaching approach that helps the student learn, understand and practice new vocabulary.

The three stages of a PPP lesson 

There are three stages in a PPP TEFL lesson.

Firstly, the teacher presents the new word, an event which involves the presentation of pronunciation and spelling in context.

Next, the teacher allows the students to practice the new word in a controlled setting, making sure the student has understood the vocabulary and usage properly.

Lastly comes the production stage, where there is a period of less-controlled practice and an informal assessment of learning. This is where the students get chance to use the new word or phrase in an original way and to relate it to their knowledge and experiences.

These three stages of a PPP lesson help the student to consolidate the new word in their mental vocabulary bank.

The sequence of a PPP lesson in EFL teaching

This EFL teaching method of presentation, practice and production is an approach that follows a definite sequence:

• The teacher presents the new vocabulary and explains the form of the language in a meaningful context.
• The students practise this new vocabulary through controlled activities such as worksheets or question and answer activities to check comprehension.
• The students use or produce what they have learned in a communicative activity such as a role-play, communication game, or question and answer session.

Teaching English using the PPP technique

Each stage of the Presentation, Practice and Production lesson must be planned well to be effective. However, the PPP method in TEFL is a highly flexible approach to teaching and there are many different activities a teacher can employ for each stage.

Presentation can include mime, drawing and audio. In fact, it is a good idea to try to engage with the students’ different senses to get across the meaning of the new word, using visual, kinaesthetic (movement) and audio techniques.

It is also important to make sure that students have understood the new word before encouraging them to practise it. It is often fun and highly effective for students to play games to practise vocabulary and to produce it.

Current debate about the PPP technique in TEFL

In recent times, there has been increasing debate surrounding the PPP method of teaching, with many critics asking if teachers should be using the PPP technique so often in the EFL classroom.

Some critics of the PPP method in TEFL think it can be too formal and structured, with too little focus on student interaction. However, we think the PPP technique in EFL teaching offers a very flexible base from which to construct a lesson that is highly student-centred.

For ideas on ways to present new vocabulary and check comprehension , and activities which allow students to practice and produce their vocabulary , please browse this PPP teaching section.

• Is the PPP method old fashioned or is it still a useful and effective way to teach?
• Do you use the PPP technique in TEFL?
• What is your favourite way to present new vocabulary?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments box below.

9 thoughts on “ PPP Technique in TEFL ”

may I know who is the actual founder of PPP technique?

Sorry Sifa, we don’t know who originally developed the PPP technique. Can any readers help?

Yes, it was Jeremy Harmer. 😉

Thanks for this information, Miri! If any readers want to check out Jeremy Harmer’s explorations of the PPP technique, you can read more in his book: ‘How to Teach English’, published by Longman.

Catherine may you please help me with the same book by Jeremy Harmer, on soft copy I will highly appreciate it.

Hi Grace, Jeremy Harmer’s book can be found online to read or download at academia.edu.

It PPP useful and used in teaching reading?

Hi Muharram, thanks for your question. Yes the PPP method can be used to teach all areas of language, including reading.

In this type of lesson, any new target words would be presented in the early part of the class (pre-reading) before the student meets the vocabulary within a longer written text. While reading the text during the ‘practice’ stage, students should be able to identify the individual ideas expressed and understand how the new words are used in context.

After reading, students can analyse the material and discuss the text, hold a questions/answer session or write about it in the production stage. This helps them deepen their understanding and test their reading comprehension. I hope this gives you a few ideas – I’ll be adding more details about using the PPP method to teach reading and writing soon.

Can somebody help me with these questions of Unit 3 i-to-i (180 hour units) please:

Match the description to the stages to make a complete PPP lesson. The aim of the lesson is expressing past habits with ‘used to’ + infinitive. For example, When I was younger, I used to watch cartoons.

The teacher repeats the model sentence with natural linking, stress and intonation. The class repeats.

1)Teacher asks, “Did he play football in the past?” (Yes) “Does he play football now?” (No).

2)Teacher says ‘used to’ + infinitive can be used to talk about things we regularly did in the past, but don’t do now.

3)The students answer conversation questions about their childhood to introduce them to the topic.

4)The teacher asks some individuals how many people share their thoughts on living in London and corrects some errors if they are made.

5)The learners use the target language to talk about how their lives are different now they live in London and compare their country’s cultures to the UK.

6)The teacher writes the model sentence on the board. When I was younger, he used to play football. Draws a box round ‘used to’ and writes ‘infinitive’ over play.

7)Learners choose an activity they enjoyed as children then walk round the class asking if other people used to do the same thing. For example, Did you use to watch cartoons?

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Creating PPP Lesson Plans: How to Teach ESL Effectively Using Presentation, Practice and Production

Want your students to be enthused, energetic learners?

Here’s a secret: It’s all in the lesson plan.

Using the PPP structure for your lessons will help you stay on track, deliver new material effectively and most importantly, help your students build new English skills.

PPP is a lesson plan template that consists of Presentation (P1), Practice (P2) and Production (P3) , and it’s often used for ESL (English as a Second Language) classes. It focuses on giving students a solid foundation for new concepts, then encouraging them to apply these on their own.   

Read on to find out how to deliver awesome ESL lessons with the PPP template!

What Makes an ESL Lesson Plan Exceptional?

How to make esl lesson plans with a ppp template, 1. presentation, 2. practice, 3. production.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

• Clear aims and objectives. First off, make sure you have a good understanding of your main goal for the lesson and how you propose to reach that goal. It’s also a great idea to share these with your students so they’ll know exactly what they will accomplish.
• Grading. Careful, we’re not talking about correcting work and giving letter grades here! This is the concept of climbing a hill, starting off with something easy or relatable to your students and then making the material more challenging as you ascend.
• PPP structure. This is one of the most used lesson plan formats in ESL. PPP (presentation, practice, production) allows you to develop a structured, graded and time-efficient lesson plan that conveys the material in an understandable way. 
• Effective time breakdown. Knowing when you should talk and when you should allow your students to engage is another key component. One strategy is jotting down time limits for each activity in the margins of the lesson plan sheet. For the PPP structure, a good time allotment might be 15 minutes of Presentation (P1), 20 minutes of practice (P2) and 25 minutes of production (P3).
• Relevant material. Take a few moments to gauge your student’s level, their interests, hobbies, work and home life. Consider showing videos, trending articles and other native content that your students would enjoy. For instance, FluentU features English videos like movie trailers and TV series clips, with interactive subtitles and transcripts for learners.

Let’s go through each step of the PPP template: 

Presentation is the first step, and it’s also the most important. This is your time to shine because it’s the main part of teaching : you’ll be explaining new concepts to your eager students.

At this stage, teachers should talk approximately 75% of the time. 

Make your lesson exciting and relatable 

Remember how boring it was when you had a teacher who only lectured, with little enthusiasm? Well, don’t be that teacher—break the mold and become animated. Students learn through context, so tell a story or use resources that excite students to learn more. Peaking interest is essential.

To lead students into the lesson, you can start with something familiar, such as material discussed in a previous class. For example, if you’re talking about house vocabulary, focus on the bedroom first, then break down the vocabulary inside of the bedroom.

Show visuals like photos and videos 

Use visuals to stimulate understanding and get your students curious about a topic.

If you are presenting key places in a city or town, using pictures of your students’ town/s will invoke interest and be relevant to their world.

For teaching home-related vocabulary, you can display photos from your home, relating them to relevant vocabulary. After that, show your students how to use vocabulary nouns with prepositions of place through statements like “The toaster is on the counter.” 

Ask thoughtful questions 

Once introduction is complete, you can then guide your students to analyze the material more closely. You are still in control of your classroom so keep presenting, but ask questions and make your students think more about what it is they are seeing and hearing.

Questions are also great for checking if students understand the new material. Don’t let them off the hook so easily. Try not to tell them answers, allowing them to work it out in English!

Practice is the second stage of the PPP lesson plan template. This is when you will hand over a bit of control to your students and let them try out the new material themselves. If your presentation was well-developed and awesome, your students will be more than ready to jump in.

In this stage, you will give your students a set of tasks or activities . These tasks should be challenging and only solvable with the new material, but not too difficult. 

The students will do most of the talking since they’ll be going over the material with you and their classmates. Generally, you can aim to let your students speak 65% of the time and just jump in every now and then to point out something new or answer questions. 

Guide your class through exercises

For a smooth transition into the practice stage, do exercises together with your students first, or work through questions together. 

To continue with the same example of rooms in a house, a great practice activity would be to let your students label nouns and prepositions of place around the room. There are many techniques for this, and you can go around the room looking out for trouble areas and helping out as needed.

Do pair and group practice

Once your students get more used to the material, you can begin pair and group activities.  

Allowing students to brainstorm and work together will encourage them to communicate more and learn about their classmates. For groupwork, you can even divide the class and organize a contest to make them more eager to focus on the material.

Production is the final stage in a PPP lesson plan. This is also referred to as the fluency stage—your students will now be like birds leaving the nest for the first time.

In the production stage, teacher talk time is at its lowest and almost nonexistent. Let your students be creative and develop their own work , speaking 90% of the time to your meager 10%. It’s important for them to gain confidence in English on their own.

Set up writing or speaking activities 

Most production activities involve writing or speaking, and sometimes both are combined if necessary. This allows your students to build confidence and be creative when using the new material, as it’s solely in their hands.

Carrying our example house vocabulary lesson through the final step, you can now let your students craft a short story or presentation involving the many things they have in their own home. They can write a script and present it to the class during production.

Encourage production through groupwork

Similar to the previous stage, you can separate your class into pairs or groups for production. They can construct dialogues, monologues, scripted plays and so on together.

One great pair exercise you can use is to have two students create a script using the new material and then let them act it out in front of the class.

A great, fun and material-rich lesson will keep your students encouraged to learn more and build their confidence as English speakers.

So for lesson plan success, be sure to construct a well-developed and exciting lesson plan using the PPP template. Good luck, and enjoy!

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• Classroom Considerations, Teacher's Toolkit

Me: Okay, time for me to do some lesson planning for tomorrow.

Also me: *yawn*

Lesson planning is one of those unfortunate things that are a necessary evil in the English as a Foreign Language classroom. Lesson planning can be downright boring if we’re honest, but it is something that needs to be done in order to teach the best lessons we can.  The bottom line, you’re stuck with lesson planning (sorry!). But it doesn’t have to be as arduous as you think.

Let’s talk about one very common lesson plan structure which can make your lesson planning as easy as, well, PPP!

PPP in the EFL classroom

Here’s the lowdown on PPP in the EFL classroom.

If you’ve even taken one look at the course content on your TEFL course, you should be familiar with PPP. PPP stands for Presentation, Practice, and Production.  t is a very common lesson plan model that is used in English as a Foreign Language classrooms around the world.

Why is PPP so common in EFL classrooms?

PPP is not rocket science. Nor is it brain surgery. This is probably the reason it is so widely used in EFL classrooms.

Once you have understood the basics of a PPP lesson, it’s super easy to slot your activities into the lesson plan framework, thus creating a lesson plan which you know will be logical and which will flow.

A breakdown of PPP

A PPP lesson is divided into three stages: not surprisingly, Presentation, Practice and Production.

The Presentation stage is basically the beginning of the lesson.

It starts with a warmer and/or a lead-in to get the students engaged and interested in the topic (or to wake them up if your lesson is at the end of the day!).

Then the teacher presents the target language of the lesson. There are a number of ways this can be done, such as presenting the language in context, eliciting the language, or telling a personal anecdote.

The teacher then tells the students the rules of the particular language structure and explains the meaning, form, and pronunciation.

The second stage is the Practice stage .

In this stage, the learners do activities to practice the target language, which requires total accuracy. These activities are, by their very nature, the controlled practice of the language.

The final stage is the Production stage .

This is when the students do more activities, but this time they are less controlled and freer. In other words, the learners are free to use the target language in whichever way they wish in the activity set up by the teacher.

The advantages of PPP

There are many advantages to using PPP in the EFL Classroom. The obvious advantage of PPP is that it is simple and straightforward. Once you have gotten the hang of the different activities you can do in the EFL classroom, it is simply a matter of plugging them into the relevant stage and your lesson should make sense.

It also provides a structure with which to plan your lessons. As long as you are clear on your aims, it helps you to plan your lesson and imagine the different steps you need to take in order to accomplish your aims.

The disadvantages of PPP

Unfortunately, there are a few disadvantages to PPP lessons.

Firstly, it is very easy to get stuck in the PPP framework .

In other words, all your lessons end up exactly the same. Of course, many of our lessons are very similar, but it’s easy to become lazy and use the exact same activities for your lessons. PPP is good like that, in that you can be confident your lessons will be effective, but you can become complacent when it comes to interest levels. As a result, your lessons can become samey .

Another disadvantage is that many teachers place too much emphasis on the Presentation stage, believing this to be the most important stage. What happens here is that the students have no opportunity to practice the language, which is actually what we want them to do.

A PPP lesson plan example

Let’s now look at an example of a traditional PPP lesson, teaching the present perfect to Intermediate learners.

Read more: An Explanation Of The Present Perfect

Presentation

The teacher puts up a map of the world on the board. In green, she has marked countries she has been to. In blue, she has marked countries she would like to go to. She asks the students to guess what the different colours mean.

Once they have correctly guessed, she boards a few example sentences, such as

I have been to India.

I have never been to France.

Have you been to Mexico?

She then explains – while eliciting as much as possible. The teacher then focuses on meaning, form and pronunciation.

The students then complete a grammar exercise, in which they complete a gap fill. As a second practice activity, the students must decide whether a set of sentences are grammatically correct or not.

The students finally discuss in partners which countries they have been to and which they would still like to visit. The students then change partners and repeat the conversations. The teacher gets feedback from the class and does a delayed error correction activity.

Alternatives to PPP

Of course, PPP is not the only way to structure an EFL lesson plan.

There are many other frameworks that work just as well, such as ARC , TTT , and TBL . Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Which one you will use in your classroom will depend on your learners, the target language, and you.

Using PPP in the EFL classroom is a great idea for beginners.

While you are starting out as a TEFL teacher, we recommend you adopt the PPP lesson plan structure just for the simple fact that it’s logical and straightforward. When you have a bit of experience under your belt then you should definitely branch out and try your hand at a few other lesson plan structures.

But until then, go forth and Present, Practice and Produce!

The above information about PPP is very informative and helpful for the beginners like me .I would appreciate if you post more informative articles about language lessons at the initial stage. thanks a lot

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A critical review of the Presentation-Practice-Production Model (PPP) in Foreign Language Teaching.

In R. Monroy (Ed.), Homenaje a Francisco Gutiérrez Díez (pp. 97-115).

Related Papers

TOJELT elt journal

Any language teacher who has gone through some kind of training program for the teaching of English should be familiar with various specific language teaching models that constitute the core of the training process. A language teaching model is a guide that helps the trainee to sequence the activities designed for the expectations and needs of learners in a lesson. This paper reviews the common language teaching models in teacher training programs Clarification (ARC) and discusses them with deficiencies over each other. The study suggests that if learners' needs and expectations are known and considered in the pre-planning stages of lessons, any language teaching model may be favorable for teachers.

Jason Anderson

Among the many lesson planning paradigms used in English language teacher education over the last 40 years, PPP has proven to be one of the most popular and most durable (see Figure 1) despite regular criticism in literature emanating from the Anglophone centre of ELT theory. After presenting a brief history of the paradigm and outlining the main criticisms directed at PPP, especially in the 1990s, I discuss some important research findings from SLA studies since the turn of the century that lend support to PPP-type lesson structures. I briefly analyse parallels between PPP and other teaching paradigms deriving from skill learning theory, linking these paradigms to the expectations of many learners worldwide, and the organisation of content in many mainstream ELT coursebooks. I identify three potential contexts for using PPP, including that of primary and secondary teachers working in low- and middle-income countries, and describe a PPP lesson structure from my own work as a teacher and teacher trainer compatible with best practice in mainstream teaching. While I caution that PPP cannot and should not be used to structure every lesson, I argue that it can be an appropriate and effective vehicle for the teaching of grammar, functional language and lexis, especially at lower levels of proficiency (up to B2), where the majority of ELT around the world happens, and is likely to happen for the foreseeable future (Graddol 2014).

Robert Anthony Olexa

The use of presentation, practice, and production (PPP) as a pedagogical strategy has received wide criticism from second language acquisition (SLA) researchers. Yet, as shown by Nitta and Gardner (2005) a PPP approach still dominates suggested language teaching practice. PPP is still widely used in Japanese public schools, colleges, and private conversation schools. An advertisement for Berlitz, one of the top conversation schools in Japan, states, “You learn a new language the way you learned your first, by listening, repeating and speaking” (Berlitz, 2014). Some colleges have outsourced the same business, using the same strategy, to run their English program. The current training manual for assistant language teachers in the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program, reads “Practice is the key to language acquisition, and is what makes the difference between a lecture and a lesson” (CLAIR, 2013). Recent training programs provided by the Ministry of Education Culture Sports and Technology (MEXT), for Japanese English teachers, state that teachers will learn how to utilize the PPP strategy for facilitating communicative English lessons, (MEXT, 2014). In the early 1990s some researchers hailed the decline of PPP in favor of alternative teaching strategies that presented more of a task-based approach (Carless, 2009). A number of papers have reviewed and critiqued both sides of this debate which is often referred to as PPP vs. task-based learning and teaching (TBLT) A number of articles analyze the claims on both sides with a view to supporting one or the other (Carless, 2009; Criado, 2013; Sato, 2010). Considering the dominance of PPP and the extensive use of grammar practice (GP) in Japanese language education, the claims against it are worth evaluating. If grammar practice is an inefficient means of acquiring language, it follows that alternatives should be adopted. At the center of negative criticism of PPP is a focus on the grammar practice step. Rod Ellis, one of the original critics of grammar practice, claims that it has little psycholinguistic value and that there are strong grounds on which to doubt its effectiveness (Ellis, 1993). As an alternative to grammar practice and a supplement to communicative activities, Ellis proposed consciousness-raising tasks (Ellis, 2002). This case study investigates Ellis’s theoretical claims about the value of using consciousnessraising tasks over grammar practice. Ellis suggested that the effects of TBLT are often delayed (Ellis, 2002). A month long case study is too short to evaluate these long-term effects and participant numbers are too small to avoid the possibility of individual learner differences affecting the data. However, the study is easily replicable and should provide some insight into the experiences of Japanese learners in the practical applications of each of these pedagogical outlooks.

Odisea: Revista de Estudios Ingleses, 10, 33-56

Raquel Criado

ABSTRACT: With the advent of the Communicative Language Teaching Method, the traditional ‘Presentation-Practice-Production model of activity sequencing’ (P-P-P) from Structural Methods became the target of severe criticisms. The P-P-P should not be categorically rejected, since it actually conforms to one of the most influential models of skill acquisition in contemporary cognitive psychology: ACT-R (Anderson et al. 2004). Nevertheless, it is necessary to acknowledge the need for an activity sequencing model which respects cognitive learning principles and is explicitly inspired by real communicative processes. In this way, students’ language learning experience can be linked to the world outside the classroom. The ‘Communicative Processes-based model of activity sequencing’ (CPM) is described as a cognitively and pedagogically sound alternative to the P-P-P through the adaptation of a lesson from a well-known 21st century ELT textbook. KEYWORDS: Activity sequencing, P-P-P, SLA, ELT materials, cognitive learning schemes. RESUMEN: Con la llegada del Método Comunicativo, el tradicional patrón de secuenciación de actividades ‘Presentación-Práctica-Producción’ (P-P-P) vigente en los Métodos Estructurales recibió severas críticas. No obstante, el P-P-P no debería ser categóricamente rechazado, pues de hecho se ajusta a uno de los modelos de adquisición de destrezas más influyentes en la psicología cognitiva actual: el ACT-R (Anderson et al. 2004). Ahora bien, es necesario reconocer la necesidad de la existencia de un modelo de secuenciación de actividades que respete los principios cognitivos de adquisición de conocimiento y que esté explícitamente inspirado en procesos comunicativos reales, a fin de que el alumnado pueda relacionar su experiencia de aprendizaje con el mundo exterior al aula. Así pues, mediante la adaptación de una unidad en un conocido manual del siglo XXI para la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera, el ‘modelo de secuenciación de actividades basado en procesos comunicativos’ (CPM) se describirá como una alternativa cognitiva y pedagógicamente sólida al P-P-P. PALABRAS CLAVE: secuenciación de actividades, P-P-P, ASL, materiales para la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera, esquemas cognitivos de aprendizaje.

In L. Anglada, M. López Barrios & J. Williams (Eds.), Towards the knowledge society: making EFL education relevant. 2005 FAAPI Conference Proceedings. Santa Fe, 22-23-24 September 2005 (pp. 339-346). Córdoba: Comunicarte. (ISBN 987-1151-80-2)

Mario López-Barrios , Elba Villanueva de Debat

In this paper we present the findings of a research in progress aiming at analyzing, characterizing and categorizing practice activities. This presupposes a lesson format model divided into stages such as PPP which stresses the sequencing of activities from controlled to freer practice towards the autonomous use of linguistic elements. Drawing on current views on second language acquisition and ESL methodology, we discuss its merits and limitations which, despite substantial criticism in the last years, still has wide acceptance among second language teachers. We then present the various alternatives to the PPP model proposed by different ELT and SLA specialists.

Porta Linguarum, 14, 7-28

Karlygash Tokmuratova

Mila Kanaruddin

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Article Contents

• Introduction
• The origins of PPP
• PPP’s popularity in the 1980s
• The rejection of PPP in the 1990s
• PPP’s compatibility with ELT coursebooks
• A more recent change in fortune for PPP
• The future of PPP?
• < Previous

A potted history of PPP with the help of ELT Journal

Jason Anderson is a teacher, teacher trainer, educational consultant, and author of books for language teachers. He has taught languages, trained teachers, and developed materials to support teachers in primary, secondary, and tertiary contexts, both pre-service and in-service, in 15 countries (in Africa, Europe, and Asia) for organizations including UNICEF, the British Council, and VSO. In 2016, he won the British Council ELTON Local Innovation award for ‘Teaching English in Africa’, a practical guide for primary and secondary teachers of English that draws on expertise from across the continent to offer practical support for novice teachers working in Africa. Email: [email protected]

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Jason Anderson, A potted history of PPP with the help of ELT Journal , ELT Journal , Volume 71, Issue 2, 1 April 2017, Pages 218–227, https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccw055

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This article charts the chequered history of the PPP model (Presentation, Practice, Production) in English language teaching, told partly through reference to articles in ELT Journal . As well as documenting its origins at the dawn of communicative language teaching (and not in audiolingual approaches, as some have suggested), I chart its history through the 1980s, discuss key criticisms directed at it in the 1990s, and also document its close relationship with ELT coursebook syllabi ever since its emergence. Recent evidence from second language acquisition research in support of explicit, practice-oriented instruction such as PPP is also discussed, along with other recent references to the model, suggesting not only that it can no longer be rejected as incompatible with research evidence, but that it may be enjoying a revival in its fortunes.

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PPP approach to language teaching

Table of Contents

Introduction.

The PPP approach, an acronym for Presentation, Practice, and Production, serves as a pedagogical framework in language teaching. This article explores the origin, merits, and criticisms of the PPP model, shedding light on its advantages and disadvantages in contemporary language education.

Definition of PPP

What is the PPP approach to language teaching?

PPP stands for Presentation , Practice, and Production . It is referred to as a procedure , model , paradigm , or approach to teaching language components.

The procedure is straightforward. The teacher presents the target language. Then students are asked to practice it, first in well-controlled activities, then in freer activities. It is only later that the students are allowed to produce the desired language.

The process starts with the input and ends with the output. What happens in between is practice.

The Origin of the PPP Approach To Language Teaching

The PPP model of teaching has always been considered to originate from a behaviorist approach to language teaching. The audiolingual method , which is based on Behaviorism , puts much stress on slicing language into smaller bits and on the importance of practicing these language bits until perfection.

PPP Lesson Plan

A typical PPP lesson plan is structured as follows;

Merits Of the PPP Approach

The PPP paradigm has its proponents in the classroom although it has been proved to originate from weak learning theory. Teachers still stick to the same procedure in delivering their lessons. This is mainly due to the following points:

• It is thought to reflect a so-called ‘logical’ or ‘plausible’ procedure of learning. Production comes only after presentation and practice.
• It is easy to implement. Teachers who still use this model of teaching start by slicing bits of language, sequencing them from easy to difficult. Then, they proceed by presenting, practicing, and asking their students to produce.
• Although Scott Thornbury believes that the PPP model does not reflect how learning actually takes place, he saw in it the possibility to prime language for later use.

Learning a language is not the sum of smaller bits

The first criticism addressed to the PPP model is that it considers language as a sum of smaller bits that can be taught separately.

Language is holistic and learning is organic (very much like a seed growing) and recursive. It is not linear. Language can’t be sliced into smaller chunks and taught discretely. We don’t learn one bit of language and then proceed to the next bit and so on and so forth.

When learning a new language point, one may go back in his/her learning to previously met language features to check consistency with present learning situations. What is taught to students is rarely retained in an individual lesson despite seeming to be mastered in the course of that lesson.

Depriving learners of learning opportunities

A second disadvantage of the PPP approach to teaching English is that it limits learners’ encounters with learning opportunities. When presenting a bit of language in isolation, we strip away other important language features. This leads to depriving students:

• From comprehensible input, which might be of use to them.
• From the opportunity to notice other language items that might be implicitly ‘acquired’.

Most of the time, learning is incidental. While helping learners to learn, we do not know for sure what they have actually learned and what is still in the process of being acquired.

Lack Of Genuine Production

The audio-lingual method, from which PPP draws inspiration, places less emphasis on the final stage of production.

After mastering language structures, students in the audio-lingual method are not given free vent to produce anything. The aim is only to imitate/repeat, apply/practice, not to genuinely produce.

Neglect of Personalization

The PPP paradigm lacks another (fourth) P: Personalization . Language learning should extend beyond mechanics to include meaningful, personal connections, enabling students to relate language to their experiences and emotions.

It is crucial to understand that we learn language to talk about our knowledge, experience, and feelings. The aim is to be truthful and meaningful. Personalization helps learners own, or better appropriate, the content and relate it to their lives. Students need to connect to the material taught. Unfortunately, this is missing in the PPP approach to teaching.

While the PPP approach offers a structured and accessible language teaching model, its shortcomings, such as overlooking language’s organic nature and neglecting personalization, necessitate a reevaluation. Language educators must integrate a more dynamic and inclusive approach, accommodating the diverse and interconnected nature of language acquisition. In doing so, language teaching can evolve to better meet the needs of contemporary learners.

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THE PPP MODEL OF LESSON PLANNING

A detailed look at the terminology and the plan.

On this page you can get acquainted with how the PPP model is laid out and how it can work for you as a way to approach your teaching.  The various stages involved will be explained and examples will be provided throughout the article.  You will be introduced to the principle ideas & terminology, look at two lesson plans applying those ideas and have a second more detailed explanation of the different stages and how they work together.

There are four sections on this page to help you get orientated: —Section A:  Introduction / Outline of the basic lesson plan —Section B:  A brief look at a PPP lesson plan —Section C:  A review and an example for a PPP lesson plan on vocabulary —Section D:  A deeper look and an example for a PPP lesson plan on grammar

WHAT IS A LESSON PLAN?

Superficially it might seem like a silly question.  But if everything is new to you, it is an excellent question.  You want to learn what goes into its creation, how it can be used, how effective it is, what factors should be considered, what expectations accompany it, and how you can understand and use it with some direction and confidence.

Whether you are a seasoned teacher or one still learning what might be involved, that lesson plan is an important element in your teaching and in the students’ learning.  It reflects to what extent you have thought about the class and what you hope your students might achieve.  That is particularly challenging for new teachers as there is so much that is still unknown.  It’s like a blank canvas in front of you and you don’t know yet how well you can draw, paint, mix colours, deal with perspectives and composition, and even have objectives.

If you have little or no experience, it is best to think of it in layers and you get acquainted with lesson planning step by step.  Trying to understand all the subtle nuances is something best approached as you become more experienced.  In the early stages of your exploration of a lesson plan, it is best to think of it more generally, with a few details thrown in for direction.  Get familiar with those ideas, and add to your understanding as your experience and familiarity with them grows.

The lesson plan, then, is a guide in how one might reach objectives set for one particular class, as well as being part of a greater process that contributes to progress made in the long run.  To borrow from another metaphor, think of your lesson plan as being a recipe and you are learning how to cook.  There are certain ingredients you want to include and a certain order that is followed.  Over time you will realize that it’s possible to play with the type and quantity of ingredients and even to some extent the order, but first you have to get acquainted with the basics.

A simple lesson plan will contain ●one or a few objectives that you want to reach, or at least make progress towards, in that class ●different sections of your class where you have different objectives specific to those sections.  For example, one section might look at what the new vocabulary to learn is.  And in that section you might have different parts – one looking at the meaning, another at the pronunciation, and perhaps another looking at the form (ex: lazy – laziness and lazily).  Another section would be dedicated to having the students apply what they have learned, first in simple exercises like changing those adjectives into adverbs and nouns, or matching the word to its definition.  Once that is clear then another activity could be introduced where the students have to put the right word (and its right form) into a gap in a few select sentences.  Another section or stage of the class would be to see how well the students could use some of those words while speaking about a particular topic assigned by the teacher.  (And the teacher can see how well his/her students reached that original objective.)

The lesson plan is the guide the teacher will be using to reach those objectives (for the overall class and for each stage or activity).  Sometimes the class doesn’t go as planned and that is not unusual, even for experienced teachers, although seasoned teachers would have a better range of understanding of what might happen.  When something unexpected happens the teacher has to make a decision on where to go from there.

These ‘surprises’ are not necessarily a bad thing nor even necessarily reflect how good or bad your lesson plan is.  However, for the teacher entering the class, it is generally a good thing to have some idea of what you would like to do, and how to go about it.  Then later you can see what really happens and use that experience to influence how the next lesson plan would look like.  Lesson planning and classroom execution can be seen as an ongoing dialogue, one influencing the other.

Once you get your feet wet and have taught a few classes, you might find you like teaching and already have a few skills that help you.  And that you could benefit from developing other skills further.  It’s the same with lesson planning.  It can be quite daunting and time-consuming, especially at first, but it does get easier over time with direction and experience.  As you gain experience with it and reflect on how to approach it, you can add more richness to your classes that your students will most definitely appreciate.

A NOTE ON DIFFERENT PPP MODEL INTERPRETATIONS

I’d like to add a short note right at the start stating that I have come across many different interpretations of what the PPP model is.  This is partly because teaching English (& other languages) has been evolving and many people want to continue with the PPP model but apply it in modern settings and approaches.  For example, years ago lecturing was the norm but now it is considered much more effective to involve the students more so elicitation and greater focus on the students plays a greater role.  You’ll see that reflected in the interpretation on this website.

There is another point on interpretations that I’d like to raise here because I have seen some confusion over the terminology of ‘Presentation’.  We’ll look at the terminology more closely a little later in the article but this one particular word sometimes confuses people.  It is not unlike ‘toilet’ referring both to the room and to the apparatus in that room.  (Perhaps this is not the best analogy, but it might be helpful.)  Presentation in the traditional model, generally speaking, refers to introducing the students to what they are going to focus on and learn in that class.  This could include some activities to warm and open the students up to a theme for the class and to receiving some kind of input such as a reading or listening that contains examples of that target language (what grammar or vocabulary the students will be learning in that class).  So when some people refer to Presentation, they refer to any of the activities in that general stage (the room in general, using the toilet analogy).  I prefer to separate those activities and call them by different names because of their different areas of focus (objectives).  When I refer to Presentation in this article, it is that specific activity or activities which directly focus on that new language being introduced.  The other elements (Context and Input) which would also be considered as part of the general Presentation stage, are treated as separate parts of the lesson plan.  There really isn’t much difference, but I have found it more expedient and clearer to refer to those elements in this way.

If you are taking a TEFL course which has a slightly different interpretation of how to label the model or interpret it, then that should be your primary reference.  And it’s not a bad idea to keep an open mind that different people view it differently.  Usually, though, those differences are not as great as they might seem.  What’s offered here on this website should still be useful to you as we look at the PPP model of lesson planning with a more modern interpretation of how things could be done.

A REMINDER OF OTHER RELATED PARTS TO CHECK OUT

If you are new to teaching a language, or new to teaching in this way, it might be worth your while to go through the complete article.  However, this article is long and quite detailed and perhaps not all sections may be relevant or interesting to everyone.  Here is a brief description of what you can find in the other sections:

FAQs – Some issues that have been on some people’s minds.  Maybe you have a doubt that was asked by someone else.

The PWP Model – This is to give you an idea of what you could do if you were to focus more on the reading, listening or video and only a little on the grammar or vocabulary.

Class in Action – Have a look at seeing what all these words and explanations are referring to.  You can watch a video of somebody teaching a class and you can compare it to how closely it follows the intended lesson plan.  If it appeals to you, you can test yourself on some or each section of the class by ●remembering the key points to focus on ●coming up with your own lesson plan for that section and seeing how it compares with that particular version ●considering how well that section was taught and followed the lesson plan

Writing your own lesson plan – You can find some tips and guidelines on how to approach writing your own lesson plan.  There is also a handy guide you can print or download to refer to when you’re making your own lesson plans in the PPP style.  (And it can also be handy if you wish not to follow the PPP style so closely.)

Examples – A reference to those examples already presented in this article as well as some new ones with ideas to consider.  You are invited to take the challenge of writing a lesson plan appropriate to a situation given to you, and you can compare it to one interpretation of how it might be done.

INTRODUCTION                       

I have had a great number of requests from new teachers and teachers with a few years of experience to help them with their lesson planning.  In this article we are going to look at the PPP model.  There are many ways one can approach preparing a lesson plan and teaching a language, and the PPP is one such model.  It is frequently used in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) / TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certification courses because it is very practical and lends itself well to many concepts that can enhance a student’s learning (such as having a flow to the class or emphasizing the inclusion of progressive activities that successively prepare the student to become a more independent language user).

There are some minor variations of the model, depending on whose version you come across.  Different academies and even different trainers within the same academy might emphasize some elements more than others or see them done in slightly different ways.  That is fine.  We can learn from different perspectives.  The view I take is to first understand the model, and then adapt it to your situation.  Some ways one could make such modifications will be looked at later in this article, but first it is best to become acquainted with what it is and how it works.

We’ll look at the basic structure and then go through it a second time, looking a little more deeply into its elements, going through each stage step by step.  We’ll also cover what many people have difficulties with – either in understanding the model or challenges they have when trying to apply the concepts behind the model.  We’ll also look at some examples and throughout the article there will be many suggestions and tips that might be helpful to you.

I know many teachers come from a background where their role is frequently one as a lecturer and some of the concepts will be a little foreign to them.  And there are other teachers, perhaps new to the field, or with only a little or limited experience.  To all of you I recommend patience.  As a teacher trainer myself, I have seen on countless occasions many eager teachers wanting to get a better grasp on the concepts, and for most, it is a struggle that has to be gone through.  For many there is no easy and fast way to get to that understanding.  It is a process and different elements become clearer as one accumulates hands-on experience applying the concepts in the classroom.  It may only take a half dozen or so challenging lesson plans to work through before it begins to make some semblance of sense, or it may take many more.  Even for those who get through it relatively quickly, it will take several years before one can feel more fully in control of lesson planning and what it involves.  This is good to keep in mind, and to keep in perspective.  The goal should be to begin to understand the model better, appreciate its potential, and then play with it to suit your own needs.

And a final word before we begin.  Lesson planning is not an exercise in isolation.  The theories behind it, the materials and activities that become part of it, the suggestions and the models one can follow, all have to deal with the inevitable:  that it is only a plan and whatever shape it takes, it is to be used in the classroom.  The classroom is the acid test.  It is the reality that the teacher and the students face.  It is normal to be surprised, especially when you are trying out new things.  You will have good classes and you will have classes or parts of classes that don’t go over well.  This is something that all teachers experience.  You learn much from the less positive experiences and it helps you better anticipate what could happen when you consider different options in your planning.  Generally speaking, it is a good idea to go into class with a plan you feel comfortable with, but be prepared to adapt to the ongoing circumstances if there are unexpected developments.  With more experience, which includes those ‘less successful moments’, you get better at anticipating what could happen and have a greater repertoire available to deal with those developments.  If you ever have the opportunity to observe a very good teacher in action, you can bet she or he has had many ‘bad’ classes along the way, and has learned how to learn from them.

So then, let’s have a look at one way a person could approach lesson planning, shall we?

A          AN OUTLINE

An exercise to get you acquainted with the stages of the ppp model.

Think of the important elements and the order they play a part in a lesson plan.

#1 Click here to see it partially completed

#2 click here to see the outline all completed.

You can see a skeleton outline with ten different empty boxes.  To the right of that image are ten different titles that are to be placed in those boxes.  Without necessarily knowing what those titles might mean, see how many you can place correctly into the boxes.  The goal isn’t to get them all correct.  The goal is to take a little time to consider what these titles might mean.  Consider the order and the relationships they might have with one another.

If you think it’s too difficult or if you want to see you’re on the right track, click on #1 box to see it partially completed.  (Then after seeing these hints, you can try to fill in the rest.)

When you are ready to see the answers click on #2 box.

A copy of this outline (with added details) will be given a little later in the article

This is the basic outline of the PPP (Presentation, Practice, Production) model and the order it usually follows.  We are now going to have a closer look at what those titles refer to.

B          A BRIEF LOOK AT A LESSON PLAN

(with a vocabulary focus in its objective).

We’re going to look at the PPP lesson plan a few times.  This first time here in Section B is to get more familiar with the terminology and some basic concepts as we look at a lesson plan with a vocabulary focus.  Later in Section D some extra details and ideas will be provided while looking at a different lesson plan, one with a grammar focus.

Before setting up your lesson plan, think clearly on what your objective or objectives are.  This will affect all your future decisions as your lesson plan begins to take shape.  What is it exactly that you would like your students to learn and can you write your objective in a way that you can see if you were successful or not?

For example:  By the end of the class the students will be able to use the new vocabulary they learned in the class while making plans to go on a holiday together.

And that vocabulary should be clearly stated somewhere, before the class begins.

Using the PPP model, we’ll look at 3 principle parts of the lesson plan and some of the stages within them:

1 – The Context (the Theme) 2 – The Input 3 – The Language Focus

All of these parts are influenced directly by what your objectives are.

The Context is you basically setting the scene.  You want to get the students engaged from the beginning.  You set the scene (context or theme) that will run through the entirety of your class, or that part of the class that this lesson plan is covering.  And you introduce that theme with something that resembles a ‘warm-up activity’.  Maybe you want to talk about ‘being on holiday’ and show the students a few pictures of people having fun doing activities often associated with vacations.  You get the students to describe the photographs and perhaps comment on whether or not they have done similar things on their holidays.

The Input is you providing the students with a text of some sort.  That text could be a reading text, a listening, or a video to watch.  If your main objective is for the students to understand and use some particular vocabulary or a grammar point, then that language should be included in the text to some degree.  Imagine that in today’s lesson you want the students to be familiar with vocabulary associated with going on holiday (ex: pack, book a room or flight, etc).  The video, audio listening or article to read will include some of that language.  That specific language you want the students to learn (the target language) is not your present concern, however.  Right now you want them to read an article about the theme and your goal is for them to become acquainted with the contents of the article (such as who went on holiday, when did they go , was it a good holiday? etc).

Before you give the students the article, you want to prepare them for the first reading task.  In this model, the rule of thumb is that the students do the reading with an objective (task) in mind.  Maybe you show them a picture that is included in the article and you ask them to predict what the article is about.  The students discuss this for a few minutes, they tell you their predictions, and you write them on the board.

Now you give them the article.  Tell the students to read very quickly to see which prediction, if any, is close to the general idea of the article.  For example:

a – they had a wonderful holiday     b -they had a terrible holiday     c – their holiday was okay, but nothing special

The idea is to skim through the article to get a fast overview, just a quick general idea of the contents of the article.  The students are not to worry about the meaning of each new word or even of a particular sentence or paragraph or two.

In this second input task, you give the students a few questions so they can focus on understanding some key concepts about the article.  Again, they don’t have to understand each and every word or idea in the text, but you are checking to see if they understand those ideas that you feel they should know.

You want them to reach a better understanding of the contents of the text, especially how it relates to the theme you introduced in the context warm-up activity.  This task is a development of the theme for today’s class, not a look at any grammar or vocabulary you may later want them to learn.  Make the task in such a way that short answers are required (true or false, or single word answers, for example).  The students look at the questions and understand the task.  Then they read the text this second time to try and answer the questions.  This should also be a fairly brief task, as they are scanning the text for specific information.  When they are done or you tell them so (for example when they have reached the end of a time limit you previously set), they can check their answers in pairs and later you go over their answers.

From this part of the class on, the teachers and the students will be concentrating on a particular element or set of elements.  The idea is that the teacher helps the students become aware of what that target language is and any key points they should know about.  Then the students practice that language with greater confidence and autonomy.

If it is a grammar point such as a verb tense, then those key points could be focusing on the form (how to construct a verb in that tense such as have been working ) and what situations to use it in.  If the language focus in on vocabulary and not grammar, it could be a set of words united by one theme (ex: family members – aunt, cousin, nephew, etc or work-related – call a meeting, delegate responsibility, conduct an interview, etc) or how to manipulate words into different forms (predict, predictable, unpredictable).

Grammar and vocabulary are the two most common areas of language focus but pronunciation and functional language can also be.  Pronunciation could include difficult sounds for the students, intonation patterns and how words can be connected together when spoken (ex: “What are you doing?” – “Whacha doin?”).  Functional language is a set of expressions and sometimes tendencies to use certain grammatical structures in a certain situation (for a particular function).  Here are two such functions: 1- asking for and giving directions (functional language: go straight two blocks, turn left // use of imperatives) 2- speaking on the phone (functional language: May I speak to X, please?, Could you take a message, etc)

The language focus is what you want your students to work towards learning and using better.  It is clearly defined in your class objectives and all three stages in the rest of the lesson plan are dedicated to that end.  The three stages of the language focus are Presentation, Practice and Production, each with one or more activities.

This is where you clearly present what it is that you want them to focus on and to learn.  In the Context and Input stages, you are orientating the students to the theme, but you are not having them do exercises with the target language until this or the Practice stage.  In this stage you may want to have the students look at the text again for different examples of vocabulary associated with travelling or being on holiday.  Maybe you ask them to find two examples of theme-related verbs and three examples of related nouns in the first paragraph.  You dedicate one part of your whiteboard or blackboard (or virtual board) to those two lists (or other lists as you see appropriate).  With clear titles you begin the lists of verbs and nouns associated with travelling on holidays.  Here is an example of how you could organize your board.  The vocabulary that is on your list stated in the objectives will appear here, whether through eliciting from the students or providing it yourself.  (Note the extra space to the right of the vocabulary.  This is prudently reserved for other issues that may come up and you may need that space to illustrate or explain something.)

Now you are entering the area that you want to focus on.  You could have simply done this at the very beginning of the class and done away with the Context and the Input stages, but through dedicating a short time to these two previous stages, the students are better orientated to the general situation and are more likely to participate.  It is also easier for them to get involved in the direction you wish them to focus on.  The key idea of those two previous stages is to invest a short time only in them.  If your main focus is on grammar or vocabulary, most of the time in your lesson should be dedicated to the PPP (Presentation, Practice & Production) activities and not a long time to the Context or Input stages.

In the Presentation stage, you elicit or provide all the target language you want them to focus on and all the relevant details you feel they should know.  That is to say, everything you want the students to know for today’s class , not everything that is known about it in general.  Don’t go overboard on the details or complexity.  Find something achievable for that group of students.  You can go through the pronunciation, the form (verb, adjective or noun, for example; maybe opposites like unpack), the spelling, and of course, the meaning.

Now that the students are aware of the target language, you want to have them begin using it.  Perhaps they might have some confusion of the meaning or use the wrong form at times (maybe using the noun form when they should be using the verb form).  Usually the Practice stage has more than one activity where the students apply what they have just learned in the Presentation stage.  The first activity in this stage could be matching the word with its definition or a gap-fill; something to check that they understood the basics sufficiently.  The subsequent Practice activities continue to develop the students’ understanding and proficiency, and hopefully, confidence in using that target language.

Generally speaking the first Practice activities are very structured with the teacher actively monitoring, guiding, correcting and commenting.  The activities progressively wean the students to become more independent of the teacher so they can use the target language with little or no help and in situations which are more ‘free’ in that they aren’t simply doing exercises that focus in on the form.  If the coming Production activity is speaking about something using the target language, then some of the Practice activities should include freer speaking to help prepare the students for that future activity.  Some examples of Practice activities in the middle or at the end of this stage could be students in pairs make a list while deciding what to pack for an overnight visit with a friend,  a week stay with the same friend or a four-day camping trip.

This is the test to see if they can do a Production activity autonomously, without the aid of the teacher.  In the Presentation and Practice stages, you have been eliciting and correcting and guiding them, but in the Production stage you want them to speak on their own, without your help.  Set up a task like going on a business trip for the following week to an exotic city in a country with a different climate.  Have them discuss what might be a good idea to pack on that trip.  This time they don’t have a handy page in a coursebook to refer to, nor the teacher prompting them if they forget how to say an item.  They work it out together.  If they make mistakes, then take note of them, but don’t correct them during this activity.

When the students have completed the activity, go over some of the points you want to bring to their attention.  Tell them what they were doing well, so they can continue doing that, and to feel that although speaking English is difficult, they can do (some) things well.  Tell them what can be improved and suggest how.  And now would be a good time to deal with some of the mistakes they made while speaking in the Production activity.  Don’t attempt to correct everything.  Focus on any target language they didn’t use correctly and if that isn’t too much, you could include a few other references like pronunciation, singular/plural forms or verb tenses, for example.

You could also make a comment or two about their preparations, like “Wow.  You guys sure pack a lot for just a short time.”  “I admire how you can travel with just a minimum of things.  I would definitely pack more things.”

And that’s it.  A brief introduction to each of the stages.  Now we’re going to do another kind of matching exercise.

C          A REVIEW

Taking stock of what has been presented so far.

Before proceeding with looking more in depth at these stages, let’s go over some of the terminology and ideas of what has been presented so far.  We’ll start off with another gap-fill kind of activity and then look at some of the terms we have been using.  This section will end with a concrete lesson plan summarizing and developing ideas presented in Section B and a listing of what activities could be done at each stage.

Without looking back, see if you can fill in the names of each of those stages based on the explanations and types of examples given.  Write the titles of those stages in the boxes.

You can use the visual clues to help you remember the names and the titles as well as the descriptions to the right of the boxes.  If it you find it hard to read the text on your device, you can click on the boxes below to help you see it in sections.

Click here to see text for top section (and click on the image when it appears below)

Click here to see text for middle section (and click on the image when it appears below), click here to see text for final section (and click on the image when it appears below).

When you’ve done what you can, scroll down to confirm your answers.

Don’t look beyond this point until you are ready to see the answers

SUMMARY OF THE PPP MODEL OF LESSON PLANNING

A quick look at the organization of the stages and what they are composed of

Download file or view large image

When I show this PPP model to trainee teachers, they seem to have some understanding of it, saying the key words at the correct times when I check for their understanding.  The same thing happens in the classroom.  The students and I get through a presentation of some point and they seem to have a decent idea.  Then I get them to try to apply it.  If I try to jump to a Production-type activity, they normally won’t be able to do it, or do it well.  There has to be some practice and we work through some of the issues together until it is clearer and more familiar to them.

With you looking at this page on my website, I won’t be able to sit with each of you personally as we go through your initial lesson planning, talk about possible changes to it, see it in action as I observe your class, then have a lengthy discussion period where we go through the finer points of both the lesson plan and its execution.  Then do it all again a half dozen more times with the same number of different lesson plans to go through, classes to observe and feedback sessions that follow them.  With some luck and a lot of hard work, some trainees begin to get a truer grasp of what it’s all about after the third or fourth session.  We don’t have that luxury here, but then again, you don’t have the pressure to pass an intensive course in a very short time.  You can experiment and progress at your leisure and you don’t have to feel the pressure of another observing you.

I do strongly suggest continuing with this article until the end, especially if this is fairly new to you.  For some people it’s information overload, so if you are feeling that, take a break for a while and come back later.  For others, they think they got it all, but when they try to apply it, they get more than a little lost and/or they really aren’t putting it into practice like they think they are.

Let’s take a quick review of some of the terminology and after that see how those stages can translate into a practical lesson plan.

This is the area of focus.  Maybe it’s vocabulary, but keep it clearly defined.  It’s not just ‘vocabulary’.  It’s a core of essential vocabulary around the theme of symptoms of minor sicknesses (cough, sneeze, etc) or word-formation (changing adjectives to adverbs by adding ‘ly’ as well as looking at irregular examples).   It could be grammar, but that, too, should be clearly specified, such as using the present continuous for future arrangements .  This is the specific part of the language or language usage that you want the students to learn more about and to use.

This is what you want to be achieved in the class.  It often includes a grammar or vocabulary point and two or more skills (reading, listening, writing & speaking).  A convenient formula that usually helps you define it is….

By the end of the class, the students will (should) be able to ______________________ ( you will fill the target language such as use some of the phrasal verbs learned in class) while speaking about _______________________( you fill in the theme of the class such as raising children).

This is the very first activity.  You introduce the theme of the class through a warm-up activity, engaging the students.  That means that the theme should be interesting to the students as well as getting them involved, such as speaking about it or exploring it in some way.  That theme will run through the coming listening or reading, the presentation and later in the practice and production stages.

A reading, listening or video that relates to the theme (and probably contains at least some of the target language in it).  The focus of the Input is to reinforce the theme and get the students exploring it further.

This is the major part of the class / lesson plan where you present the target language, have the students practice it, and later they try to include it in a production activity (normally speaking).

The teacher officially introduces the target language to the students in this stage of the class.  As much as possible, the teacher involves the students as the form, pronunciation and important concepts are looked at.  This can also include looking at examples in the previous text from the Input stage.

After the students have a basic introduction to the target language, they have to use it in a series of activities which help them gain a better understanding of how to use it.  The teacher is often actively involved, guiding them along the way but self-learning and group work are frequently part of this stage.   Usually the first Practice activity or two is very structured so the students can get more familiar with how it is formed and how it works.  Later Practice activities get the students to use the target language in a freer way, such as in mini-conversations or speaking situations where the students have to interact and what they say isn’t always so predictable.  The teacher also participates less to encourage more student independence.

The students have to ‘produce’ the language on their own.  This is usually in the form of speaking, but could also be writing.  In the final activity of this PPP model, the teacher is not involved other than setting up or explaining the task the students have to do.  Plus, the students have to be participating in a dynamic, ongoing conversation (or debate or role-play, for example) rather than simply following a formula like Student 1 asks a question and Student 2 responds or somebody reading a text they wrote previously.

After the Production stage, the teacher gives back feedback on how well they carried out that last activity as well as possibly bringing up a few points that came up during the class.  The students might also give feedback such as communicating how they felt about the last activity or the class.

LESSON PLAN EXAMPLE

Much of this was already covered in Section B, but it doesn’t hurt to have it all together in the form of an actual lesson plan with the practical focus of looking at what activities could be done for each stage.  Some details have been added to complete the example although the pictures and actual listening are described but not provided.  The idea is to simply see (in a sketched out form) what can be done in a concrete lesson plan.  The language focus of this lesson plan is on vocabulary.  (A more detailed lesson plan, complete with accompanying materials, will focus on grammar in Section D.)

By the end of the class, the students will be able to use some new vocabulary related to activities while on holiday (see list below in Target Lanuguage) in a conversation about that theme.

Vocabulary related to holidays organized into 3 groups: Verbs/verb expressions:  pack, unpack, book a room or flight, go sightseeing, buy souvenirs Nouns:  customs control, tour guide, entrance fee Adjectives:  breathtaking, dirty, friendly, unfriendly, crowded, terrific, terrible

Elementary level  (third month into course) 12 adult students 60 minute class 3 times/week

Theme:  Holiday activities ●Show students 4 pictures of people doing different things on holidays (sightseeing, relaxing somewhere, trekking, trying out new food) ●Get the students to describe what they see and to comment if these are activities they like to do while on their holiday

Listening:  A 4-minute dialogue of two friends comparing their last holiday.

●Which person had a good holiday and who didn’t?

●Circle the items in the list that each person did on holiday.

(The students are given a list of items, perhaps categorized for quick referencing.  Pronunciation and meaning of the words on that list is elicited / provided before the students are asked to do the task of circling those that they hear.)

●Make a table on the board for vocabulary related to holidays. 3 columns: verbs/verb expressions  //  nouns  //  adjectives     (leave space for other work) ●Write one example of each:  go sightseeing  //  customs control  //  breathtaking ●Make sure students know the meaning and pronunciation ●Tell students to look at the second paragraph of the audioscript (the dialogue they heard written out) and find at least two more examples for each column. ●Students compare answers in pairs and later tell teacher.  Teacher adds to list on board. ●Teacher elicits more vocabulary using mime/gestures (ex: for packing), definitions and synonyms (ex: explaining what a tour guide does), or describing the situation (ex: see if the students know the word ‘crowded’). ●Teacher goes over all the vocabulary, looking at meaning, word form (verb, noun or adjective; negative forms or opposites), and pronunciation ●Teacher asks a few students randomly about some of the vocabulary covered ex: What’s the opposite of ‘pack’?  What can you book? 

●Give students a handout with a matching exercise  (left column is the target language and the right has the descriptions, definitions and synonyms) ●Students do it individually, compare answers in pairs, then teacher goes over it with class

●Reassign new partners to work in pairs.  Student #1 can look at the handout from the previous exercise and communicates the meaning of the word.  Student #2 has to say the word (but can’t look at the handout). ●After one minute, change roles.

●Students do a gap-fill in a two-paragraph text.  There are 8 missing words, all from the target language list except one, which has to be taught.  Students do the task and the answers are corrected.

●Students are placed into groups of three or four. One person is in a ‘hot seat’ where the others ask her or him questions about her or his last holidays. Each line of questions must follow this pattern:

(NOTE: a line of questions is a number of questions focused on one theme such as ‘the beach’ or ‘packing’.)

There are at least two questions from the questioners: ●1- The first question contains a word from the target language list ex:  Was the beach crowded?             Or        ex:  What did you pack for your last holiday? ●2- The second question is a follow-up question that can be asked by another person ex:  How many people were there?     Or        ex:  Do you normally pack a lot? ●3- Encourage the students to not only ask questions, but also to make comments (That’s interesting.  Wow.  Really?) and to volunteer information about themselves while still speaking about crowded beaches, for example.  In other words, start off with some questions but let it develop into a mini- or semi-conversation.

●4- When no more questions or comments can be made with that line of questions, continue asking the person in the hot seat more things about the theme (her or his last holiday), but with a new line. ex: What did you pack for your last holiday. (as before, the question contains a word from the target language list) ●5- Follow that question up with more (ex:  Do you normally pack a lot?) and continue the sequence of #1-3.

●Write the prompts for this direction on the board using simplified language to help the students stay on task.  For example: 1-Ask question with new vocabulary 2-Make follow-up questions 3-Make comments and more questions

●Model with one group before telling everyone to start.

●New groups of 3 or 4 ●Tell students to imagine that they are meeting after class and are enjoying a coffee together and speaking about their best holiday.  Encourage people to volunteer information, ask questions, and yes, sometimes include some of the target language if they remember to. ●Once they start speaking, teacher goes off to side of the room or casually monitors each group without intervening (no participation of any kind).

●Teacher makes a comment stating that she/he liked many of those holidays and perhaps asks a follow-up question or two to somebody. ●Teacher writes a few words on the board that came up in one group’s conversation that might be interesting for all the class to know. ●Teacher refers to a few mistakes that were made (incorrect usage of vocabulary or a few minor grammar mistakes) and elicits the correct usage and perhaps why it is correct. ●Teacher writes on the board a few words that were mispronounced and gets the whole class to repeat them. ●Teacher ends the class by saying how well they are making progress in their speaking and reminds them that their composition is due next class.

D          A DEEPER LOOK AT PPP LESSON PLANNING NOW WITH A GRAMMAR FOCUS

(adding on more details).

Now that you have a general idea of what some of the important elements and stages are when making a lesson plan following the PPP model, we are going to have a closer look at those components.  This time the examples will be for a lesson plan with a grammar focus.  (The lesson plan itself will be presented at the end of Section D.  Before that we can look at some possibilities that could be done and a little more what defines each of those elements.)

Remember we want to make a clear definition of your aims for your lesson plan.  Some teachers’ objectives can be confusing at times because they are stated in a way that is far too vague.

There are different kinds of objectives.  For example:

Consider your PERSONAL AIMS :

Is there something you want to focus on in your teaching, like working on giving more concise instructions or eliciting more from your students rather than simply you lecturing them most of the time?  Then deliberately look over your lesson plan as you are developing it and also when you’ve finished so you can work out how to deal with those issues when you are actually teaching the class.  Can you work those personal aims directly into some key places in your lesson plan?  Keep those personal aims to only one or two for each lesson plan.

AIMS FOR EACH ACTIVITY in a single lesson plan            

For every activity you do, whether it is for 30 seconds or 15 minutes, you should have an aim for it.  Why did you plan for that activity, and why that particular way?  What is it you hope to achieve by doing it in that way?  Is it really necessary, or is it just because it’s a time-filler or because it appears in the student book?  How can each and every activity contribute to your lesson plan, making your class richer and more efficient?  Look at each activity to determine if it really helps the students to more completely achieve the objectives you have set.  If you think that students might not be well prepared to do one of the activities, perhaps you can add an extra activity just for that purpose, to give them an opportunity for further practice.

AIMS FOR YOUR STUDENTS FOR THIS PARTICULAR CLASS (OR THIS PART OF THE CLASS)

This is the general aim but you still want to define it as clearly as possible.  “Do a reading” is not really an objective. – it’s simply listing an activity.  Try to think a little ‘scientifically’ in that you want to word your objective in a way that you can test it.  You want to see if the aim can be successfully achieved, or to what degree it was achieved.  If everyone simply reads something, there is no way of really knowing what, if anything, they got from doing that activity.

As you can see, it is possible to have different objectives, and that is fine, but you don’t want to have too many.  Keep them to a minimum and spend your efforts on making them achievable.  Besides making them realistic, you want them clearly defined before you enter the classroom so you can better prepare your activities and materials accordingly.  If the objectives are clearly defined, then during the class you can see how they are being met, which is also helpful for you after the class if you wish to reflect on it further.

Here are a few different examples with a grammar point in mind.

By the end of the class the students will (should) be able to

• use the past continuous while speaking about what they did last weekend.
• understand what a phrasal verb is, learn a few new phrasal verbs, and use them while speaking about romantic relationships
• understand the difference between the first and second conditional and use them both in different work situation role-plays of negotiating shared responsibilities

When the students are doing the final Production activity at the end of the class, they should be using the target language as defined in this objective.  All the stages prior to the Production activity are preparing the students to be able to try to carry out the activity well, and without the aid of the teacher.

You may have noticed that there is a recommendation to clearly identify the target language in the objective and to place it in a context (theme) for a Production activity.  Here is a model you can follow:

The target language is clearly defined in a way that the teacher (or another observer) can see if it is being produced by the students while exploring that theme.  If the target language is vocabulary, then provide that list so one knows what the major focus is on.

As we go through all the stages of this lesson plan about a grammar point, we are going to keep two things in mind: 1- The objective is for the students to use the past continuous in their speaking 2- in the context of speaking about last weekend .

This is both the theme that is running through your class from the beginning to the end, and a reference to the very first activity you do to get things started.  It is recommended to state the context right in your objective for the class.

Example:  By the end of the class the students will (should) be able to use the past continuous while speaking about what they did last weekend.

The text you choose in the Input, be it for listening or reading, reflects this theme.  As much as possible the examples you refer to in your presentation, the exercises and activities you have in your practice stage, and certainly in how you construct your production activity, all should reflect this theme.

In the initial activity, you want to stir up your students’ interest in the theme as you introduce it via pictures, a very short video clip, showing some realia or having them discuss some topic.  Some institutions refer the Context or Theme stage as the Engage stage because you want to engage your students in an active way right at the start.  That means you are not speaking about yourself or other themes, unless the students are interested in that theme and perhaps asking you a lot of questions.  You can participate, but typically the focus is on them getting involved.

An example:  Show some pictures of what you and your friends were doing last weekend.  Get the students to describe what they see and maybe ask you some questions.

NOTE:  The target language (ex:  past continuous) may or may not appear in the Context activity.  And if it’s for a low level group who in theory has never encountered the structure before, then they clearly should not be expected to use it.  The target language will be introduced later in the Presentation stage.  It will probably (should) appear in the Input as well, but not as part of the tasks.  The target language will be part of the background in the Input.  It is simply embedded in the reading or listening.

Other examples of a Context speaking activity we could use in this lesson plan: –The weekends are not for working, in theory.  What are some things you can do on the weekends? –What do you like to do on the weekends?

Again, we are simply setting the scene or orientating the students to the theme of recreational activities during the weekend.  We are not trying to get them to use the past continuous or showing them anything about that structure.

Some schools of thought recommend that there should be an intermediate activity (sometimes labelled as the ‘Introduction’) between Context and presenting the Gist activity in the Input stage.  Quite often, though, it is expedient simply to say something along the lines of, “In a few moments we are going to do a listening.  Based on the pictures we have looked at, what do you think the listening will be about?”

I agree with the idea that having a smooth transition between the stages and activities adds to the good feeling of having a class well planned and executed.  If there is an abrupt change, the flow won’t be so broken with some words as suggested above, linking the last activity with the one about to happen.  Still, sometimes a teacher feels it is important to better prepare the students for that coming text in the Input stage by having another activity.

Besides encouraging a smoother link between the Context activity and the first Input task, the Introduction activity could have other uses.  For example, imagine the reading, listening or video is at a level higher than the class has, but you still want to use it for various reasons.  You may want to have a brief activity looking at some of the key but troublesome vocabulary they will encounter.  Perhaps the ideas might be a little complex in the input text, or foreign to the students, as in certain customs and cultural tendencies.  An activity would be well-placed to bridge that gap and to help orientate the students to what is coming.

The Context activity could be to elicit what the students like to do when they’re on holidays.  Imagine the reading is a brief account of what happened to two friends while they were on holiday in an exotic country.  The Introduction activity could be to tell the students the name of that country (or another country that would be equally exotic to them) and in groups decide what they might like to do if they went there on holiday.  (The students still don’t know anything about the reading.)  Or to speculate how the people there might like to enjoy their holidays or free time.

What is important when deciding what to do for an introduction-type activity is that it contributes to making a smoother transition from the Context to the Input and if necessary, prepares the students for the coming Input activities.  If you feel that an Introduction activity is not really necessary because of time constraints and/or because the transition from the Context directly to the Input isn’t such a big jump, then an Introduction activity isn’t warranted.  You can merely introduce the reading verbally.  For example, “Okay.  Now that we’ve spoken a little of what we like to do on holidays, we’re going to read about two friends visiting a strange new country for the first time.”  Then the teacher would give the instructions to the Reading for Gist activity.  That simple sentence would serve as a transition to the reading.

One last example.  If the theme for the class is to be speaking about last weekend, then the Context activity could be describing some pictures depicting activities which could be done during the weekend.  Imagine the reading (or listening or video) will be about some distant family member from another country spending last weekend with the family and they showed their visiting relative how they do things in their country.   You could set up an Introduction activity where students would brainstorm and speculate on similarities and differences between the two cultures’ weekend activities.  That intermediate activity will help make that transition into the Input stage smoother and easier.

This is the part of the class where you introduce a reading, listening or video that reflects the theme.   That theme was presented in the Context activity (and possibly in an Introduction activity if you had one in your lesson plan) and will be part of the text.  For the purposes of this article, ‘text’ refers to what the students read (such as an excerpt from a book or an article from a magazine), listen to (such as a song or dialogue recording) or watch (such as a video on YouTube or an excerpt from part of a movie).  The Input stage is where the students receive the text and are asked to carry out some tasks that deal with its theme and contents.  The target language (in this case: past continuous) is not part of these tasks.

In the PPP model with a language focus (typically grammar or vocabulary), there are usually two tasks given in the Input part of the class: 1) Reading for Gist 2) Reading for Specific Information

There are other possible types of tasks that could be done, such as reading for comprehension, but they are often better suited to another model (like the PWP model where the stages are Pre-, While- and During the reading or listening).  In the PPP model, the major focus is on the language (usually grammar or a particular group or type of vocabulary), not on specifically developing the students’ reading or listening skills.  Because of that premise, less time will be spent on the input, be it reading, listening or viewing a video.  That means not many tasks or many questions to answer for any one task.  The input is still important to the PPP model because it reinforces the theme that is running through the class and it provides examples of that target language in action.  The students can see how it is used in that reading, listening or video.  The text in the input can be used later in the Presentation or Practice stages to analyze that usage in some way, or be used in other tasks such as changing or adding to the contents, for example.

Some people think that the gist activity can be done by having the students do the listening, video or reading first and then ask them to tell you what it is about.  In theory that would still cover at least some of the GIST criteria – determining what the overall contents is about.  I, for one, though, prefer not to do it that way for three reasons.

One, the students tend to take a much longer time trying to work out the meaning of the text as well as focusing on some of the vocabulary and perhaps difficult grammatical structures.  You want them to do a quick, almost ‘glance’ of the text if it’s a reading and simply get the drift of it.  If the text might be fairly difficult for them to handle, then your question would be very general (ex: Is it an excerpt from a science fiction novel, a technical manual or book on philosophy?)  The students can feel good that they are or possibly are capable of doing the task.  If they have to understand everything in a difficult text, they might feel demoralized.

Another reason I prefer that they don’t have to come up with an answer that requires some explanation of what they think the text is about is that it involves skills other than simply identifying the gist of something.  The students may be able to identify something in general (depending on the question you create), but they may not be able to articulate why.  Some students may not have good summarizing skills, for example, and that might be what you are asking them to do.

And the third reason is that I usually prefer the students go into the reading or listening with a clear task already in mind.  They have to read the text in such a way that they can complete the task – to answer the question I gave them beforehand.  If they have to decide if the person is happy or upset about his/her stay in the hotel, then they approach the text in that way.

Here are 4 activities that could work as Gist tasks: 1) Predicting the general contents of the text before they read it is often a good activity.  They base their predictions on an easy prompt supplied by you (such as basing it on the Context activity).  For example, “Okay.  We’ve talked about this picture.  I am now going to give you a reading.  What do you think it’s about?”  And you write in note form those predictions on the board. 2) Give three titles (you make them up yourself beforehand) and the students have to choose the most appropriate one 3) Show three or four pictures and the students select the one which most closely matches the text 4) Categorize the text in some way.  (You may or may not wish to give them options such as angry, happy or disappointed,  or  science-fiction, historical novel or romantic comedy.)

If you give options (like 3 titles to choose from), decide on how challenging you want to make them.  You don’t want them to be so obvious it almost isn’t necessary to read the text, but not so difficult that they would need a PhD to work out a possibly acceptable answer.

Remember that the Gist task is given BEFORE the students hear, read or watch.  This is sometimes confusing for teachers because the task is given before the reading, listening or watching.  In other words the instructions for the task are explained before the students receive the input.  Once they receive the text, the students read or listen with the task in mind.  They don’t blindly read or listen and are then asked to do something.

NOTE:  For the purposes of showing the PPP model in a certain light, this and other recommendations are quite clearly stated to do things in a certain way.  However, if a teacher is very familiar with the PPP model and has objectives for his/her students that require activities to be constructed out of the model, that would not only be fine, but commended as well.  Following the model is recommended until one reaches a good understanding of it.  Then breaking the rules can be done with greater knowledge and direction.

Also remember that the GIST task is one that should be done quickly.  Students shouldn’t spend a long time working through much of the text and its language.  Usually there is just one gist question, like Where did the conversation take place?   a) in a restaurant     b) in a shop     c) in an office

How did the customer feel about the service?    a)  happy     b) surprised     c) angry     d) depressed (Choose the MOST APPROPRIATE option)

Select the best title for the article: a) Thanksgiving, again          b) My family get-together          c) An important cultural event

There might be some reasons to justify all three titles, but after reading or listening to the text, one should stand out much more.

In summary you basically want to follow this procedure: 1- Assign the task to the students before they start reading or listening 2- Students quickly go through the reading text, or they listen to the audio or watch a video with the main idea of answering that question. 3- -optional- Students could discuss with a partner what the answer could be 4- Teacher confirms correct answer, possibly asking students to justify why that one and not the others

As the Gist task, the typical procedure is to give the questions or task BEFORE they do the reading or listening a second time.  They approach the input with that task in mind and should ignore other issues (such as troublesome vocabulary or structures).

You want the questions to be short answer, easily confirmed.  Think of the students quickly scanning through the text with their finger, looking for that passage that mentioned which day of the week the cruise ship left the port of one particular city.  These are not reading comprehension questions where they have to work out inferred ideas or opinions , or deduce what probably happened.

If you are doing a grammar or vocabulary focused lesson, as is this case, you want to keep this and the previous activities (in the Context and Input stages) short.  So don’t have complicated questions or ones that require a long time to go over.  Maybe four to eight short answer questions should do.  Do try to cover a few key elements that bring out a few basic points in the text, and/or select some items that can be fairly easily found.

Ex:  Which day did she go to the gym?   ________   (the text stated it was the day after her Wednesday exam)

Ex:  Did everyone go to the party?   ________ (it was stated in the text that everyone but John went)

Ex:  Which city did they visit first?     a) Yazd          b) Tabriz          c) Shiraz          d) Esfahan

It’s a good idea to have your students justify the answers.  Maybe have them check their answers first with a partner and then randomly call on the students to answer the questions and say why they think that answer is correct.  This doesn’t have to take a long time but can be useful in a number of ways.  For example, students don’t often like to be called upon to answer questions in class, especially if they are not sure of what to say.  Working in pairs first will help their confidence and in their learning from each other.  When you are monitoring the students checking their answers together, you will gain some insight as to what some problematic or easy areas might be.  If Student A had difficulty but Student B explained the answer very well to him/her, then you might consider asking Student A to later say his/her answer and why they chose it.  They are better prepared and will feel better about being able to successfully contribute to the class.

The number of questions is not very important but a half dozen or so is a ballpark figure, depending on the length of the text, the points you want the students to look at, and how much time you want to dedicate to this task.  Keep them close-ended (short answer or yes/no rather than open-ended where they have to give a long, more involved answer).  Your questions serve to highlight a few key points of the contents in the text, such as what happened in the story.

The Context and Input establish the theme and provide some background to that scene in different ways.  Now that the students have been ‘orientated’, they are ready for the main thrust of the class: the target language.  In this particular example for a lesson plan, you want the students to begin considering what is involved with the past continuous verb tense.

There are three stages in the students’ development in their proficiency of using the target language which comprise the language focus phase:  Presentation, Practice and Production.  There can be more than one activity for each stage, and it is quite often the case for the Practice stage.

If the idea is to partially review grammar that they have been exposed to before (perhaps earlier in the course or in a previous course) and to build onto that understanding, then you can elicit examples from the Input text or direct the students’ attention to some.

If this is the first time they are dealing with the structure, you could still refer them to an example or two in the text and elicit its form, for example.

The Presentation stage is you taking the responsibility of showing them what they need to know in order to successfully complete your objectives and the Production activity.  But that does not mean you will be doing all or even most of the talking.

Plan out beforehand how you want to use your boardwork, what you want to present and how, in what order, how you could involve the students in different parts of your presentation, and how you can check their understanding during and after your presentation.

For example, if you decide to focus on the form first, you could ask the students to find an example in the first paragraph of the reading they did in Input.  Then you write on the board in big clear letters:  THE PAST CONTINUOUS

Below that you could ask a student to repeat the example she found and have her write it on the board below your title.  You could ask another student how many words are used in that verb tense and a third what kind of words  those two words are ( auxiliary ‘be’ in the past and the present participle or –ing form of the verb ).  If they don’t know what you want from them, you could prompt them in different ways, providing clues.  Quickly auxiliary plus VERBing is written below the example and students are asked to find the two remaining examples in that first paragraph, one of which is with the auxiliary were, and the other is with was.  You could elicit how one could decide which auxiliary is appropriate (was or were?) to use, guiding them to come up with she / he / it / I       +     was       +      VERBing we / they / you      +    were      +      VERBing

You could strengthen this idea by asking how this form differs from the present continuous, both in form and in function (what situations would somebody use this verb tense).

You then look at the negative forms ( he wasn’t eating // we weren’t watching TV ) as well as WH and YES/NO questions and answers ( WH Question:  What were they doing?  They weren’t doing anything special.  //  YES/NO Question:  Was she reading?  Yes, she was.  No, she wasn’t .), eliciting and guiding the students to ‘discover’ the answers on their own.  With each new elicitation or discovery, you complete the model on the board you wish to show your students as a convenient reference.

Past continuous could be used in a variety of different situations, so you would focus on only one or those that you wish the students to concentrate on, and make sure the concepts are clearly presented.  Maybe a visual timeline ( Example 1 ) would help, matching two different applications of the past continuous to the concepts represented by that timeline.  Then a gap-fill of two or three sentences ( Example 2 ).  Have the students tell you the answers and you question them again, checking their understanding of the form and the concepts.  You leave the references on the board because you know you will need to go back to them from time to time during the different practice activities.

NOTE:  If you’re not doing a review (if it’s the first time you are presenting the past continuous to the students), you would probably prefer to present only one or two of the above ideas.

NOTE: The numbers assigned to the different concepts/uses of the past continuous listed above are only for the purposes of clarity in referencing them in this article.  The numbers and order do not reflect any common standard or serve any other function, nor do they suggest that the concepts should be taught in that order.

Examples of gap-fill in Presentation where you guide/prompt the students so they better know about the form (how to construct the past continuous), the concepts being shown and what is expected of them:

1) What _____ you doing at 11 o’clock last night?    I ______ watching YouTube videos. 2) The phone _______________ (ring) while I ________________ (take) a shower.

With your comprehension checks to see if they have a reasonably good understanding, and with the modeling of how to do the gap-fill exercise, you feel the presentation stage is over and have the students complete the first Practice activity.  You monitor them continuously and if you feel that they are not getting it, go back to the Presentation stage, perhaps in a different way (either inspired from the moment and the students’ difficulties, or with a pre-planned activity that might help clear things up).  You could also try to get the students who you think understand help those students who haven’t understood it yet.

Think of a continuum going from the Presentation stage right on up to the Production stage.  The Presentation stage is where the students are orientated to what they need to know about the target language.  It is in the Practice stage where they begin to apply those concepts in an increasingly proficient manner, simple at first leading to incorporation in speaking near the end.

Remember that the students are involved in the Presentation stage and this participation helps guide and prepare them for the Practice activities.  The Practice activities typically begin with the simpler, more mechanical exercises where they practice one or more specific points.  Here are some examples:

The main idea is to focus on one or two ideas brought up in the Presentation.  If there are many subtle concepts it might be prudent to have one exercise looking at a couple of those concepts, another exercise looking at other concepts and perhaps a third integrating them all.  You want the students to gain confidence in their skills as they become more familiar with the target language.

Sometimes you discover that an exercise doesn’t go over well because the students are not completely prepared for it.  Of course it is better if you can anticipate this and adapt the exercises appropriately beforehand.  Still, it is a fact that students struggle in their learning and it is not possible to guarantee success in every endeavour by following magic formulas.  Sometimes those difficulties surface during an activity and this can be seen in a positive light.  With good guidance a teacher may be able to increase the students’ awareness of those difficult elements and their motivation to resolve them.  One way to do this is to introduce a new Presentation activity focusing on those issues and how they may be solved or dealt with.

Subsequent Practice activities would reflect those issues and reinforce the solutions and confidence as the students apply the ideas and participate in those activities.

With this idea of a continuum and a series of progressive activities, let’s return to the beginning of the Practice stage as described in our lesson plan for having the students learn about the past continuous.  Fresh from the recently finished presentation, have the students apply what they have learned in the examples modeled in the gap-fill in the Presentation and have them work out in pairs how to complete more sentences in a handout or in their workbook.  This could be the first activity in the Practice stage.  They can check their answers with people on either side of them, and then you go over the answers with them, so they feel comfortable that everything is in the correct place.  While monitoring them doing the activity, you may have noticed a mistake or two, so you could elicit from them some reminders or pointers to keep in mind.

After the first practice activity, maybe you feel they have a clear enough idea when to use the past simple and when to use the past continuous.  If not, you can make a quick Presentation stage activity to go over the basics again, eliciting where you can.

Then have them do another activity, deciding which form to use.  For example, the students are given a new set of sentences and they have to decide whether the verbs in each case should be past simple or past continuous (as shown in the second sentence in Example 2 in the Presentation).  Be careful to select or create items in your exercise that directly reflect what you want your students to focus on.  If an item is ambiguous (both forms could be correct) or an item is touching on other concepts you don’t want to deal with, it is best to avoid these complications.  The students do the exercise individually this time, then check their answers with a partner, and you go over it with them.

At the end of the class you want them to do a Production activity, which involves some free or freer type of speaking.  This is a big jump from simply doing an exercise or two on paper.  It is now time for a third Practice activity (remember the continuum idea where you are building them up to speak on their own for a while, hopefully using the structure occasionally in their speaking).  To get them speaking in the Practice stage, you could have them ask questions and answer them in pairs, modelling a couple examples to help them get the idea.

Imagine you want the students to have a good working idea of the past continuous using Concept 5 in their final speaking production activity.  After presenting a gap-fill practice activity for Concept 5, many students are not prepared to suddenly use that structure in spontaneous speaking.  So then, think of a way that you can get the students to practice the target language in their speaking first .  For example, do a simple question-answer speaking activity using the structure:

1) Put students into pairs so they know who they are going to be asking after they prepare their questions 2) Model and/or elicit / write on the board a few examples first before the students begin writing. 3) Students individually prepare a number of questions (ex: at least four, or give them a time limit of 3 minutes) to ask their partner later.  Monitor what they’re writing and give them help when needed. 4) Tell the students that they are now going to speak in pairs.  Have Student 1 ‘interrogate’ Student 2 for 1 minute or the length of time needed to ask the questions.  Fast finishers can improvise a few other questions.  When you feel the time is right, have the students change roles.

“What were you doing at 9 o’clock yesterday morning?”    “I was eating breakfast.” “Were you watching TV after supper?”    “No, I was doing my English homework.”

If it is the first time the students are learning the past continuous, your students are at a very low level.  It might be good to have them do WH questions only in one activity (asking and answering) and YES/NO questions/answers in another activity later on.  If they catch on fast, or if it is more of a review, you could mix the two.  In either case, for a low level, it is probably a good idea for them to prepare the questions first by writing them out.  You monitor to make sure they have the right idea.  Then they apply those questions in that speaking activity.

This is still not a Production activity.  They are doing a lot of preparing and receiving a fair amount of guidance.  Plus it is not so ‘free’ or spontaneous.  It is quite controlled.  It is true they can create their own questions, but it is simply a question – answer routine.

After they do this first speaking practice activity and you give them some feedback (about what they’re doing well, give some suggestions, and perhaps a correction or reminder or two), have them do another speaking practice activity.  Remember you want to better prepare the students for the production activity.  Soon I will provide two more ideas of what you could do next.

One thing to keep in mind is that you don’t want your students to learn and apply in speaking all the different possible concepts of the past continuous in one speaking activity.  One is usually enough, but sometimes if the students are catching on fast (or if they have had prior exposure to the concepts/structures), you may want to add one more.  This has the benefit of making the speaking richer and of expanding the possible directions the conversation may take.  However, this is not recommended in the very first presentation of the structure or if the students appear to require more practice.  Generally speaking, it is better for students to practice each concept individually first.  Later, and if it seems reasonable to ask the students to attempt more than one in a single conversation, then you can.  For example,

Students add Concept 3 to Concept 5 in their speaking

Sometimes one concept or structure can provide a good stepping stone to introducing another.  For example,

What were you doing at six o’clock yesterday evening?            I was jogging in the park.

Here we are starting off with the recently practiced Concept 5.  From this point we could apply Concept 3:

Did you see anything suspicious (while you were jogging)?

One way to approach this is earlier in your Presentation stage you might only focus on Concept 5 and have the students practice it as suggested above.  Then add a new Presentation Stage just for Concept 3.  The form of the verb tense is the same so it would be a brief new presentation.  You would focus on the new concept or the new situations that this form can be used in.  If you feel it prudent, the students could do a practice activity using examples just for Concept 3.  Then you could continue with an integration of the two, maybe with a short presentation of that integration.

Remember that this speaking Practice activity would occur after presenting Concept 3 and having the students do at least one written exercise (a gap-fill, make corrections, transformation, etc).

If you emphasize the point of view of the person asking the questions is like a detective, you can continue with more questioning:

Did anything unusual happen while you were jogging?

Here you want the students to think of the situation as the past continuous and consider a different (and shorter) action or event happening during that situation.  Model as you did in the previous activity and have them practice in pairs.  Note that some verbs (state or stative verbs) don’t lend themselves to being used in the –ing form, so there could be parts of sentences that depict the situation but are not in the past continuous form.

Did anything unusual happen while you were at work that afternoon? ( NOT : Did anything unusual happen while you were being at work that afternoon?  — ‘be’ is one of the state verbs.) For those state verbs (verbs which describe a state or condition more than an action, such as be, understand, have for possession) you have to use the past simple form and not the past continuous.

For a low level group, you don’t have to teach every little aspect that might influence the application in some way.  One good thing about controlled practice activities (written or spoken, including reading, listening or video input) is that you can keep the students focused on what you think is appropriate for them at that moment.  If other elements surface, feel free to tell them that those aspects will be looked at in a later point in their learning (either in the current course or at some future level).  If you attempt too much, the students will get confused and frustrated and you won’t be able to reach your original objectives.

We’re not done with the Practice stage yet.  We can still build further, helping the students not only prepare for the coming Production activity, but also on how to develop their language skills and understanding of the target structure.  The previous speaking Practice activity can be repeated, perhaps with new partners to add an element of freshness, and be upgraded to a higher level of complexity.  This can be done by adding a few more details.  For example:

What were you doing at ten o’clock last night?             I was watching TV.

What were you watching? Do you always watch TV at night? Were you alone? What did you do after that? And after that? Why did you…. / Why were you ….? What kind of ….?

Notice that most of the questions are now in the past continuous and past simple tenses, not just one form.  Plus, other verb tenses could temporarily enter (such as Do you always…?), which frequently happens in real conversations.  People can explore brief tangents but return to the principle focus.  Or by asking other kinds of questions, they can get a richer perspective on the theme of interest.  This is what you want your students to do in the speaking Production activity later on.  In this speaking Practice version, you are free to encourage, direct, correct and offer any kind of guidance that will help them become stronger users of the language.

If I have time and I see the need for it (which is quite often), I like to include what I call a ‘dress rehearsal’ activity.  The dress rehearsal is very similar if not identical to the Production activity but because it is conveniently placed in the Practice stage, the teacher can intervene and guide.   It should be stated very clearly here that the ‘dress rehearsal’ is not officially part of the PPP model.  It is only my recommendation as a suggested final Practice activity if the teacher has time for it and feels it is useful.  

Imagine the students have gone through a series of activities earlier in the Practice stage and seem to be ready for the Production activity.  I set the dress rehearsal activity up by giving them clear instructions and they begin speaking in small groups about what they did yesterday.  They can ask any questions they like and answer them the way they want.  But some groups continue with a simple question – answer routine despite my instructions explicitly stating that I would like them to have a conversation about what they did yesterday.  So I stop the activity mid-stream and elicit or emphasize that it is preferred that they develop their answers by giving further details, and others participate too by making follow-up questions or adding comments of their own.  Imagine it is a real conversation.  Maybe, too, some are not using the past continuous or some using it a little incorrectly, like every sentence must be in the past continuous.  I remind them of what to do, and we try it again.  It works better this time.

You may not always have time in your class for a dress rehearsal, but I have found it very useful on many occasions.  If your dress rehearsal is so successful that it was a Production activity in its own right, you might be tempted to do away with the originally planned Production activity.  I still highly recommend carrying it out as well, if not in that class, then in the next one.  We’ll talk more about the Production activity in the next section.

A lot was mentioned in the Practice stage.  Here are a few key takeaways to think about:

1- Do more than one activity in this stage.

2- The activities help the students understand and use the structures.   The Practice activities are there to help the students understand the target language presented in the previous stage (Presentation) and to have the students begin using it themselves.  This contributes greatly to their awareness of how it works when they have to use it.  It also increases the likelihood of them using it in the future.

3- The teacher actively guides and helps the students.   It is normal that students need time and experience before they can begin to feel comfortable in using the new structures.   As they progress through the Practice activities, they should feel more confident in their understanding and usage.  The teacher guides them through the activities and elicits what they should know when there are doubts.

4- Be prepared to present one or more points again.   Returning to a Presentation stage is not a bad thing.  Often students are in a much better position to appreciate those key elements after having attempted to use the structure in some Practice activity.  Highlight those difficult areas, and elicit what you can from the students so they can ‘discover’  how to use that structure well.  Then give the students a new Practice activity so they can apply what has just been placed into their attention.  If it is complicated (for example more than one area of difficulty), keep those initial Practice activities simple and focused on one aspect each.

5- Think of a continuum from recognition of basic points about the target language to production of the structure near or at the end of the Practice stage .  Generally speaking, the activities are progressive in their demands, beginning with confirmation of understanding of the basic key points raised in the Presentation stage.  Later activities in this stage become more open-ended in that the students create their own sentences or use the structures in a more personalized way.  The last activity/activities include freer speaking opportunities where the target language is one part of a greater interaction.  (For example, “Ask three follow-up questions, one of which is using the past continuous.”)

6- Prepare the students for the Production activity .  It is recommended that the final activity/activities resemble or prepare the students for the coming Production activity.  If the production skill is speaking, then the students should be using speaking in at least one of the Practice activities, preferably more than one.  If the students have to speak in a certain way such as responding to questions or contributing comments & perspectives in the Production activity, it is recommended that there is a Practice stage activity that reinforces this.  If the students have difficulties with the expectations, for example, then the teacher has the opportunity to address them while they are still part of the Practice stage.

The dress rehearsal will likely be very similar to the final Production activity except that the former gives you the flexibility to jump in if needed, be it providing slight guidance or stopping everything momentarily while you bring something to their attention.  To make the Production activity not an exact replica of the previous dress rehearsal (if everything went smoothly), you can make some changes by

a) changing the groups (for example new pairs) b) changing ‘yesterday’ to ‘last weekend’ or any other minor changes c) having them change roles if roles had been used in the dress rehearsal

Completing the Production activity will help you feel good that you have brought the students through all the stages and you are in a better position to see how well you have met your original objectives for the class.  The students are happy too, because they are not only assimilating some aspects of the English language for a better understanding, they have direct experience that they can see and reflect back on, confirming that they can use the language without the direct aid of the teacher.  (Yes, they had all that preparation beforehand, but the final task was carried out without the teacher’s intervention.)

When the teacher intervenes by guiding, correcting, prompting, interacting with the students, even if it’s head nodding and the like, it’s still a Practice-type activity.  You want them to speak without you in the picture.

If in the last Practice activity you feel that they are not ready for the Production, then you add on additional practice which can help strengthen those areas you feel necessary.  The students may be almost ready but may need one more practice run to feel confident about it.  You could change the groups around or add minor variations and do it one last time spiced with any reminders or prompts that would guide them.  Perhaps you might try not intervening in that last Practice activity, or certainly keep it to a bare minimum.  And when they are done, you can give them some positive feedback.  Now they’re ready for the Production activity.

Remember the objective set for the lesson plan was to have the students use the past continuous while speaking about last weekend.  There was a warmer to introduce the students to the theme of activities to do in your free time (Context).  There was an Input stage where the students received a listening or reading that further developed the theme and had some examples of the target language embedded (although the students didn’t actively study them or were asked to use them yet).  The Presentation stage was to show them officially everything that they needed to learn in today’s class.  That includes the form, pronunciation (ex: ‘were’) and when (what situations) to use it.  In the Practice stage they did different exercises and activities to show that they know how to use the form and say the words correctly (or reasonably so – allowing for some mistakes.  (Depending on the complexity of the grammar point and how familiar they are with it, many of those mistakes will hopefully become easier to correct, such as they wasn’t studying to they weren’t studying .)  In the Practice stage, they begin to apply the concepts they learned or were exposed to in the Presentation stage.  The Practice stage is also the link between Presentation and Production.  Usually there are a number of activities that gradually prepare the students for the Production activity.  In an officially observed class, your objective in your lesson plan would reflect how you plan on getting your students to progress to that final activity, and to have your students try to use the target language while speaking.  In a normal regular unobserved class, you have more flexibility.  If the students aren’t ready for ‘production’, then you will likely postpone the Production activity for another day, after more Practice and possibly Presentation activities in the next class or two.

There are different elements that are characteristic of the Production stage.  These are the two that many new teachers have difficulty understanding:

1) The teacher does not intervene after setting up the speaking activity.  As mentioned above, this includes gestures or a few occasional brief words when students look to you for confirmation or direction.

2) Even if you don’t intervene, it still is not a Production activity if students are following a formula and their interaction is limited, especially because they are following a fairly strict structure like a question – answer routine.   Another example of a non-Production activity is to have them read aloud some previously prepared written sentences in an earlier Practice activity.  It would help if the students are placed into groups and the others have to respond to the prepared sentence just spoken, but this would still be a Practice activity.  Writing some sentences, perhaps even doing other activities where students practice responding to them in some ways all help them be better prepared to enter the later Production activity where they should be engaging in a dynamic ongoing conversation.  You can give instructions encouraging the students to include the target language before they start having that conversation.  However, no prompting (even an occasional cough or tapping on the board by the teacher) is to be done once they start.  You want your students to fly from the nest on their own, without the constant presence and guidance of the teacher.  If they make some mistakes along the way, then fine.  Let them make their mistakes.  It is important that they are prepared for the task and that they try to do it on their own .  After the Production activity, you can give them some useful feedback.

Sometimes it’s difficult for teachers to stay out of the picture during the Production activity and they want to jump in when there is an awkward silence or students are making tons of mistakes.  If the teacher does participate or lead in any way, then that element of independence is lost and the activity begins to take on more characteristics of one done in the Practice stage.  When the teacher does notice something (good or bad) during the Production activity, the teacher can take note of it and bring it up in this Feedback session.  Obviously if the students have no idea of what they should do or how they can go about it, then the Production activity would have to be stopped.  (This is why the dress rehearsal idea can work very nicely in preparing the students for the Production activity.)

As explained above, the feedback is a way of addressing what happened in the Production task.  Corrections could be made, certain details, expectations or issues might be clarified, tips can be offered, reminders given and praise given on doing some things well.  This feedback need not be limited to the Production activity, but could also refer to the class as a whole, and the students’ progress in it.  It can be used as a good way to close the class, perhaps leading to informing the students about their homework.  And the feedback could come from the students as well at times.  Maybe the teacher could ask them how they felt the activity or class went over, what their doubts are about the target language or in using it.  Perhaps the students themselves can offer ideas on how they would like to practice the language more.

So then, if your original objective for the class is to learn about the form and two situations where one would use the past continuous while speaking about recent activities at home (last night, last weekend, etc), then your class plan could look like this:

As in Section C, after having a look at some details of each stage,a lesson plan on vocabulary was provided.  This lesson plan is focusing on grammar and each activity is working towards orientating the students to the theme and/or learning about the structure.  The activities reflect the ideas presented in those stages discussed above and provide a way to meet the objectives for those stages.  The students progressively work towards showing some proficiency in using the target language (in this case, the past continuous) in a final speaking activity.  The lesson plan could look like this:

●By the end of the class the students should be able to use the past continuous while engaging in a conversation about what they did last weekend.

●Show some pictures of people doing fun or relaxing things and students describe them (learning the relevant vocabulary such as the action verbs – reading a book, playing tennis, etc)

●Then the students ask the teacher questions to find out what s/he did last weekend or typically does on the weekend.  (It’s fine if the students don’t use the past continuous and they shouldn’t be expected to if they haven’t been taught it yet.  In fact, the past continuous isn’t part of the lesson plan until later in the Presentation stage)

●Write on the board 3 titles and tell the students they have to decide which one (A, B or C) is the most suitable for the reading.

●Give the students the reading and 60 seconds to complete the task.

●Ask the students to say their choice(s) and say why.  When all the choices have been gone over, tell them the correct answer.

●Give the students a handout with six sentences. All six sentences reflect what happened in the text they just read, but each sentence has one mistake. Students are asked to look at the example of the first sentence and make similar corrections for the remaining five.

NOTE: These mistakes reflect understanding the contents of the text, NOT any grammar errors.

Ex:  Julie went to the market on Saturday .   Friday

●Students complete task individually, compare answers with another student, then go over their answers as a class.

• Write on the board two sentences found in the first paragraph of the text.

Ex:  There was a lot of traffic.    Lots of people were going to the beach.

• Elicit the names of the two verb forms and write them above the examples.
• Elicit the structure of each. (regular verb in past simple form = verb + ED) ( past continuous verb has 2 parts: be auxiliary in past + verb in ING form)
• Elicit how to create the negative forms and write those sentences on the board.
• Elicit how to create a WH question (and answer)
• Elicit how to create a YES/NO question (and positive and negative answers)
• Elicit when to use the past continuous. (Focus on Concepts 1 & 2 but accept others) You want the students to understand that they can use the past continuous form when describing a general situation happening in the past (ex:  It was raining yesterday ), or when a particular action lasted for a period of time and you want to bring attention to that (ex: It was raining all night ).

●Before continuing on to the Practice tasks, ask different students comprehension check questions, testing them on what they understand of what has been presented so far

• Give students worksheet. Explain exercise 1-1: There are 5 gap-fill sentences to complete, writing the past continuous form with the provided prompts.

Ex:  She __________ football yesterday.           (not play)

●Students do it individually, check in pairs, then go over answers with class

• Exercise 2 on worksheet. Students invent answers to respond to 6 WH and Yes/No questions. Ex: What were they doing?  __________ (They were sleeping. – for example) Was he studying?  (+) __________ OR (-) __________ (Yes, he was.   OR    No, he wasn’t.) ●Model one or two examples first, before students start the exercise

●Students do exercise individually, check in pairs, then the answers are gone over.

Have the students ask you past continuous questions about your last weekend.  Encourage both WH & Yes/No questions.  Allow other questions too, like past simple and present simple, and if they make mistakes, guide them by eliciting the right form of question to ask or the key elements which would help them decide which form to use.

• Write on the board the following question and answer: What were you doing at ten o’clock last night? I was watching TV.
• Elicit if the action was for a duration (ex: for 3 hours), a description in general (ex: the sun was shining) or for an action happening (in progress) at a specific time in the past (Yes!)
• Point out that this is a different function (situation to use the verb tense). Ask students if there are any changes to the form in the question or answer. (No)
• Draw a time line (see Concept #5)
• Elicit or provide more WH questions: – – What were you watching on TV (at that time)? – – Who were you watching TV with (at that time)? – – What were you doing at 11:00 last night?
• And elicit some Yes/No questions:

– – Were you watching TV at 10:30?     (Yes, I was.  //  No, I wasn’t.) – – Were you eating at 6:15?

●Students write questions to ask partner about last night (with specific times). If students seem to be able to handle it, ask them to write two WH questions and two Yes/No questions.  If not, do 3 WH questions only. ●Teacher monitors and helps/guides when necessary.

●Students are placed into pairs.  One student is to ask a WH question, and the other answers it.  Model first with two students so they are clear on the task instructions.  Then students carry out the task and the teacher monitors. ●In the same pairs, students change roles.

●If only WH questions were done previously, then repeat tasks 2-1 and 2-2 but for Yes/No questions this time.

●Teacher goes into ‘hot seat’ role where students have to ask WH and Yes/No questions about what s/he was doing yesterday. ●Teacher points out that simply asking a list of unrelated questions soon exhausts the activity.  The students can enrich their speaking by 1) asking follow-up questions – not all of which have to be in the past continuous form  (ex: Do you do that every night?) 2) making comments – (ex: That’s interesting.  Me too.  I was doing that too.) 3) volunteering information about themselves – I don’t like to watch TV.  I prefer to do other things in my free time…..) ●Teacher chooses one student to be in the hot seat and the class asks that person about her/his day yesterday.  The teacher encourages follow-up questions, comments from the class, as well as volunteering information about themselves.

• Students are divided into groups of 3 or 4, one person in each group is in the hot seat, and they ask and speak about yesterday. (Some questions and sentences are in the past continuous, but many aren’t.) Teacher monitors. ●After a few minutes the teacher tells the students to select a new person for the hot seat.  Teacher monitors.

After a few more minutes teacher stops activity and addresses class, offering a little feedback (such as encouragement, advice and eliciting corrections to some mistakes).

• Students stay in the same groups. Rather than focusing on just one person who is in a hot seat role, tell them to imagine they are having a coffee together and a short conversation about what they did yesterday. Encourage the people to all participate, volunteer information, make comments and ask questions, including follow-up questions.
• Teacher monitors and prompts them as the students attempt to have a conversation for five minutes.

●At the end of the activity, teacher gives some feedback such as tips, recognition of what they were doing well, some corrections on mistakes made when using the past simple or continuous, and more encouragement for everyone to participate in the conversation.

• The teacher changes the groups so there are new members in each group.
• The students are told to do the same thing as before, only now the theme of their conversation is to talk about last weekend. They can find out how their weekends were similar or different, and if the weekend was unusual or like every other weekend.
• This time the teacher does not intervene and s/he tells them so. They will have up to 5 minutes to speak about the theme and the teacher will not be participating or helping in any way. It is up to them to maintain the conversation.

●The students engage in their conversations the best they can.

●As with the dress rehearsal, the teacher gives feedback in the form of corrections, tips and reminders, and pointing out what the students did well.

●The students have to write 150 words about what they did last weekend, including at least one example of the past continuous for Concept 1* and at least one example of Concept 5 * .

*NOTE: ‘Concept 1’ and ‘Concept 5’ are not the official names or numbers of these referenced situations.  They were only used for the purposes of this article.  They could very easily be called Situation 1 and Situation 2 or any other title that the teacher may prefer to use.

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Language education , Language Teaching Strategies

Using the ppp lesson structure to teach grammar and vocabulary.

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Understanding the grammatical elements and key vocabulary of a language are essential parts of achieving a good degree of fluency. Without them, it is pretty difficult to communicate clearly with a native language speaker. Grammar and vocabulary can therefore be seen as structural parts of a language and usually require a specific teaching methodology to deliver effectively.

Deductive approaches to teaching grammar and vocabulary are commonly used in this regard and form part of initial teacher training courses like the CELTA and CertTESOL . In such approaches a teacher presents a rule / structure to the class and the class then produces language based on that rule. This technique easily fits into a lesson structure known as PPP (Presentation, Practice and Production) . This blog post explores the PPP language lesson plan structure in detail, outlining how and where it can be most effectively used in English language and foreign language teaching classrooms.

The PPP lesson structure

As outlined in the image above, the PPP model consists of three progressive stages, which combine to engage and motivate language learners. Best practice suggests that a 60-minute lesson should feature equal time (i.e 20 minutes) to each stage – language teachers can therefore plan out their lessons in advance allowing enough time to address any issues that students may encounter. It is worth noting that this structure therefore works best with classes of uniform ability – otherwise less able students can be left behind if the key learning outcomes have not been fully understood. (Remember to check out our other post for ideas on how to tailor lessons based on students’ different language levels ).

Let’s work through each of the PPP stages in turn.

1. The ‘Presentation’ Stage

In this stage the teacher presents the new grammar concept or vocabulary in a meaningful context or situation to their learners. Building up stories on the board, using realia (e.g newspaper cuttings, household items, hobby materials), flashcards and miming are fun ways to present the language. Short audio or film clips can also be highly effective. 

The aim of this stage is to ensure that the students understand the context you are presenting and to get them to start thinking about it. Always try to get their thoughts on the context you’ve presented – ask them if they have been in this situation, has a family member? How did it make them feel and what happened next? This helps students to bring the situation to life and helps them remember previous scaffolding on the topic (i.e grammar and vocab that they already know). 

2. The ‘Practice’ Stage

In this stage, students begin to use the elements of the target language that they learnt previously through activities developed by the educator. The stage is usually controlled by the teacher and learners practice saying or writing the language structure or vocabulary correctly. Teachers should certainly model and correct if mistakes occur.

Typical practice stage activities include:

• Drill sentences / sounds – individually, in pairs or whole class
• Multiple-choice exercises
• Gap fill tasks
• Directed, paired conversation practice

The aim of these practice activities is building students’ accurate use of target language. If common errors persistently occur, then a specific exercise or recap session might be useful.

3. The ‘Production’ Stage

Once learners have demonstrated that they fully understand the key learning points and are able to demonstrate this without mistakes in controlled exercises, they can move onto the (free) production stage. In this stage, students are encouraged to use the target language as fluently and naturally as possible to replicate use outside of the language classroom.

Typical production stage activities include 

• Communication tasks (e.g presentations, speeches, debates, articles)
• Collaborative tasks
• Discussion activities

In this stage the teacher should not intervene or correct whilst students are “producing” language. Rather if mistakes have been made, it is better to address them after the exercise has been completed.

Advantages and disadvantages of the PPP lessons in language teaching

As with all language teaching strategies and lesson structures, the PPP approach is not 100% guaranteed to work brilliantly in all classrooms and with all students. A review of the literature relating to the PPP approach identifies a number of advantages and disadvantages which we summarise below.

• The PPP method is easy to adopt and is good for new language teachers
• The approach is widely applicable and can be used very flexibly
• It’s easy to plan a lesson around and has a clear, logical structure for students (and educators) to follow
• Evidence suggests that teachers trained on this method are more likely to use new teaching methods than those who do not.

Disadvantages

• It encourages and prioritises accuracy over fluency
• The presentation stage is too teacher-focused and has limited student engagement
• It can become boring to students if used repeatedly, particularly for higher language proficiency students
• Research suggests that it might not be the most effective way to teach or learn a language

As always, our recommendation would be to test it and try it in your setting and then tailor it to your specific circumstances. Maybe see how some form of learner-focused guided discovery could be incorporated into the presentation stage. Collaborative learning activities could, for example, also be included in the practice stage and a task, such as you might find in a task based learning approach would also fit well into the final stage.

How do Sanako products help educators to teach using the PPP lesson plan?

Sanako produces a range of language learning and teaching tools that help educators to improve their students’ reading skills. For example our browser-based language teaching solution Sanako Connect supports educators across all stages of the PPP language teaching approach.

• PRESENTATION – Educators can create distinctive contexts and situations in Sanako Connect using a wide variety of easily uploadable stimulus materials including text files, PDFs, presentations, audio clips, video, and web pages.
• PRACTICE – Test students’ understanding of grammar concepts and key vocabulary by creating exercises and questions for them to answer through gap-fill and multiple-choice quizzes.
• PRODUCE – Students can be easily divided into pairs or group discussions and be assigned role play and discussion activities. Outputs and deliverables can be collected, and reviewed on the same platform.

If you’d like to find out more about how Sanako’s dedicated language teaching solutions could transform your approach to teaching English or other modern languages, please contact us now to arrange your FREE demo!

This blog post was last updated 26 September, 2023.

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• Professional development
• Planning lessons and courses

Planning a grammar lesson

Without grammar, words hang together without any real meaning or sense. In order to be able to speak a language to some degree of proficiency and to be able to say what we really want to say, we need to have some grammatical knowledge.

By teaching grammar we not only give our students the means to express themselves, but we also fulfil their expectations of what learning a foreign language involves. Fortunately, nowadays with the emphasis on a communicative approach and a wealth of stimulating resources, teaching grammar does not necessarily mean endless conjugation of verbs or grammar translation.

Which approach?

• Presentation

There are two main approaches to teaching grammar. These are the deductive and the inductive approach.

• A deductive approach is when the rule is presented and the language is produced based on the rule. (The teacher gives the rule.)
• An inductive approach is when the rule is inferred through some form of guided discovery. (The teacher gives the students a means to discover the rule for themselves.)

In other words, the former is more teacher centred and the latter more learner centred. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. In my own experience, the deductive approach is undoubtedly time saving and allows more time for practising the language items thus making it an effective approach with lower level students. The inductive approach, on the other hand, is often more beneficial to students who already have a base in the language as it encourages them to work things out for themselves based on their existing knowledge. Presentation, practice and production (PPP)

A deductive approach often fits into a lesson structure known as PPP (Presentation, Practice, Production). The teacher presents the target language and then gives students the opportunity to practise it through very controlled activities. The final stage of the lesson gives the students the opportunity to practise the target language in freer activities which bring in other language elements.

In a 60-minute lesson each stage would last approximately 20 minutes. This model works well as it can be used for most isolated grammatical items. It also allows the teacher to time each stage of the lesson fairly accurately and to anticipate and be prepared for the problems students may encounter. It is less workable at higher levels when students need to compare and contrast several grammatical items at the same time and when their linguistic abilities are far less uniform. Presentation

In this stage the teacher presents the new language in a meaningful context. I find that building up stories on the board, using realia or flashcards and miming are fun ways to present the language.

For example, when presenting the 2nd conditional, I often draw a picture of myself with thought bubbles of lots of money, a sports car, a big house and a world map.

• I ask my students what I'm thinking about and then introduce the target language. "If I had a lot of money, I would buy a sports car and a big house."
• I practise and drill the sentence orally before writing it on the board (positive, negative, question and short answer).
• I then focus on form by asking the students questions. E.g." What do we use after 'if '?" and on meaning by asking the students questions to check that they have understood the concept (E.g." Do I have lots of money? " No. " What am I doing? " Imagining.)
• When I am satisfied that my students understand the form and the meaning, I move on to the practice stage of the lesson. During this stage of the lesson it is important to correct phonological and grammatical mistakes.

There are numerous activities which can be used for this stage including gap fill exercises, substitution drills, sentence transformations, split sentences, picture dictations, class questionnaires, reordering sentences and matching sentences to pictures.

• It is important that the activities are fairly controlled at this stage as students have only just met the new language. Many students' books and workbooks have exercises and activities which can be used at this stage.
• When teaching the 2nd conditional, I would use split sentences as a controlled practice activity. I give students lots of sentence halves and in pairs they try and match the beginnings and ends of the sentences. Example: " If I won the lottery, " …. " I'd travel around the world. "
• I would then do a communicative follow up game like pelmanism or snap using the same sentence halves.

Again there are numerous activities for this stage and what you choose will depend on the language you are teaching and on the level of your students. However, information gaps, role plays, interviews, simulations, find someone who, spot the differences between two pictures, picture cues, problem solving, personalisation activities and board games are all meaningful activities which give students the opportunity to practise the language more freely.

• When teaching the 2nd conditional, I would try to personalise the lesson at this stage by giving students a list of question prompts to ask others in the class. Example: do / if / win the lottery?
• Although the questions are controlled the students are given the opportunity to answer more spontaneously using other language items and thus the activity becomes much less predictable.
• It is important to monitor and make a note of any errors so that you can build in class feedback and error analysis at the end of the lesson.

When teaching grammar, there are several factors we need to take into consideration and the following are some of the questions we should ask ourselves:

• How useful and relevant is the language?
• What other language do my students need to know in order to learn the new structure effectively?
• What problems might my students face when learning the new language?
• How can I make the lesson fun, meaningful and memorable?

Although I try to only use English when teaching a grammar lesson, it is sometimes beneficial to the students to make a comparison to L1 in the presentation stage. This is particularly true in the case of more problematic grammatical structures which students are not able to transfer to their own language.

It is also important to note that using the PPP model does not necessarily exclude using a more inductive approach since some form of learner-centred guided discovery could be built into the presentation stage. When presenting the 2nd conditional I sometimes present the language in context and then give the students a worksheet with a series of analysis questions to do in pairs. PPP is one model for planning a lesson. Other models include TTT (Test, Teach, Test), ARC (Authentic use, Restricted use, Clarification and focus) and ESA (Engage, Study, Activate). All models have their advantages and disadvantages and I, like many other teachers I know, use different models depending on the lesson, class, level and learner styles. Further reading

Grammar Practice Activities: A Practical Guide for Teachers . Penny Ur, Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers 1988 Grammar Games and Activities for Teachers . Peter Watcyn Jones, Penguin Books 1995 How to Teach English . Jeremy Harmer, Longman 1998 How to Teach Grammar . Scott Thornbury, Longman 1999

PPP vs Certification

I work in a university in Cuba, the latest news is that students need to get a certificate in English to complete the requirements for their to graduate. But English is a handicapped subject in primary, secondary and preuniversity schools, our students hardly can answer personal information questions. PPP is not the answer to train our students to pass the certification exams on A2 level.

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great! I like it

Teach grammar, not linguistics!

If there's one thing that gets in the way of teaching grammar anywhere outside of university, it's linguistics ! Check out this recent article in EL Gazette https://www.elgazette.com/linguistics-and-grammar-time-for-a-divorce/

english grammar

may I know when did the author upload this article?

Re: english grammar

This article was written in 2005.

Best wishes

I don't understand the complaining about PPP. It is a standard method in all subjects. It works well. The variation is PWP , pre while post which might be better but would take more time to identify patterns. So students would be lost in the woods without any presenting of rules. It is how you teach PPP. I think I havent done it very lively up to now reading this. Thank you very much for the advices.

Teaching grammar

It's good to see someone defending a deductive approach and PPP. They may not be trendy, as comments above suggest, but for some students they are vital. Grammar teaching became un-trendy in the 1970s, as the first comment above points out. That was a bad move, and one that was particularly bad for the many students, specially the many who are not so good at "discovering things for themselves".  In this respect, the deductive / PPP approach is more egalitarian. Andrew Rossiter discusses this in an article in the November 2020 issue of EL Gazette - https://www.elgazette.com/how-to-demystify-grammar /

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