Test 1

Over the last few decades, many methods have been used for teaching English as
a Foreign Language. Among these, the Presentation, Practice and Production (PPP) was
and still is one of the most used nowadays. However, according to Scrivener, the PPP
approach to teaching language items is “fundamentally disabling, not enabling”
(Scrivener 1994, p.15). Therefore, the main purpose of this essay is to evaluate the
possible reasons why PPP may be considered “disabling”. This essay will begin with an
exposition of the PPP method, analysing its stages and classroom application.
Subsequently, an examination of its advantages and disadvantages will be conducted.
Finally, this paper will suggest some alternatives that teachers can adopt instead of PPP.

PPP is a teaching method that was created in the 1970s. It divides a lesson into
three main stages: presentation, practice, and production. During the Presentation stage,
teachers present a new language item in an appropriate context. They can do that by
telling students short stories, using visual aids and showing short videos. The purpose of
this stage is to teach them new vocabulary or grammar. In the practice stage, students
practice what they have learned through the use of drills, exercises, and dialogue
practice. The main objective of this stage is to establish the learners’ accuracy.
Therefore, it is controlled by the teacher. Lastly, in the production stage, learners do less
controlled practice activities. For instance, if they learned the past simple, teachers
could pair up the learners and they could tell each other about their last weekend. In this
way, they would have to use the past simple inevitably. Therefore, they have the
opportunity to use the target language without the teacher’s control. During this process,
teachers monitor learners by listening to their conversations and helping them if
necessary. However, they do not interrupt anyone since this stage is focused on the
development of learners’ fluency.

Even though PPP is one of the most used teaching methods, some authors
pointed out some of its disadvantages and limitations. When teachers choose the PPP
method, they select a topic to teach and end up isolating it from the rest of the language
features. However, Anderson stated that “The key assumption […] that features of
language can be isolated, taught, practised, and learn separately within a synthetic
syllabus, was not supported by early SLA research.” (Anderson 2016, p. 222). In other
words, according to early Second Language Acquisition research, features of language
should not be taught in an isolated manner as this would be unnatural and unproductive.
Native speakers, for example, are not restricted to using a single verb tense. When
speaking fluently, they may use the past simple, the present simple or even the future
depending on the context. Therefore, it does not make sense to force our students to
only use the target language as they may feel the need to resort to other language
features. If the practice is too controlled, they would only focus on the target language
and their conversations may be too limited. Consequently, they could not totally express
themselves because they are restricted to a certain topic, and they could not explore any
other options nor develop their creativity. Moreover, if they exclusively rely on the
target language, they will probably not make mistakes and they will not learn as much
as they could. In essence, the isolation of the features of language and the excessive
focus on the target language that happen in PPP lessons may threaten students’
autonomy and restrict their linguistic development.

In addition, Anderson also stated that “PPP is teacher-centred, causing teachers

to neglect the needs of the learner, and preventing them from responding to the
individual challenges that learners face during the lesson.” (Anderson 2016, p. 222). As
it was mentioned before, the presentation stage consists of a teacher’s presentation of a
new topic. In this stage, students listen attentively to the teacher’s explanation, but they
do not actively participate. However, nowadays, most of the lessons, at least, should be
student-centred, not teacher-centred. Instead of passively listening to the teacher’s
comprehensible input, depending on their level, students should be more autonomous
and try to find the answers and/or to understand grammatical rules on their own.
Teachers should not explain everything, but guide their students. Furthermore, if the
students discover the correct answers with the scaffolding provided by the teacher, they
will feel more confident than if it was the teacher giving them the answers immediately.

Additionally, the PPP lesson shape is fixed. The order of the stages cannot be
reordered. Thus, it means that the presentation stage always comes first, and the
production stage always comes last. That is to say that the presentation and practice
stages take most of the lesson, leaving limited time for the production stage.
Nonetheless, the presentation stage is teacher-centred, and the practice stage consists of
controlled activities where students most likely will not make mistakes. The production
stage, which is the most important one as it is essential to develop students’ language
proficiency, always comes towards the end of the lesson. Therefore, the students may
not have enough time to practice what they learned. Besides that, if the lesson shape of
the next lesson is PPP again, the process repeats itself, and teachers start a new lesson
by presenting a new topic even if the students have not had time to do freer practice
activities concerning the last language feature that they learned. Briefly, teachers must
make sure that every learner has an opportunity to practice new language items since it
helps learners know if they really understand it. Also, since the production stage cannot
occur at the beginning of the PPP lesson, it would not be unreasonable to say that
teachers should allow more time for this.

Despite its drawbacks, PPP also presents some advantages. For example, Criado
suggests that “The presentation stage allows students to pay attention to and notice
specific linguistic features.” (Criado 2013, p.101). Therefore, this particular stage can
be very pertinent and useful because as long as the learners pay attention to the
teacher’s presentation, they will learn the new topic effectively and they will be
prepared to practice it. Furthermore, to check their understanding, teachers should ask
concept check questions that are pre-prepared questions that allow them to know if their
students really understood their comprehensible input. If this presentation stage did not
exist, students could feel lost, because they would have to talk about a certain topic
before listening to any explanation. As a result, they would not be as accurate as they
could be, and they might not even have enough inner language to complete the task. In
short, the presentation stage is very useful, especially for lower-level learners.

Furthermore, Criado also claims that “Keeping current organizational

procedures in teaching materials apparently benefit foreign language students in the
sense that recurrence of classroom action patterns induces the feeling of security in their
minds.” (Criado 2013, p.102). Therefore, the fixed structure of the PPP lesson can be
good for young learners who like routines. If all English lessons are similar, they know
what they will be doing and teachers do not catch them by surprise, which may scare
them. If they know how the lesson will be organized, they feel more secured than if the
lesson shapes are constantly changing. In this way, they tend to be more accurate and
even fluent because they are more confident.

However, as it was mentioned before, PPP is not the only English teaching
method that exists. Some teachers might have different opinions on this approach. For
this reason, every teacher can choose any method that they prefer based on the students’
needs. Another very famous English teaching method is Task-based Learning (TBL).
According to Willis, this method “[…] is less rigid and offers students far richer
opportunities than PPP. It requires no radical new techniques.” (Willis 1994, p.20). This
method also consists of three stages: pre-task, task cycle and language focus, but it
follows a reversed sequence. That is to say that at the beginning of the lesson, the
teacher proposes a task that will help students activate their prior knowledge and inner
language. For instance, the teacher could show them a picture and ask them to describe
it using their own language. During this process depending on the teacher’s objective,
they could write some keywords on the board. In other words, the students are the ones
describing the picture, not the teacher. After this contextualisation process, learners will
do a communicative task where they use language that they already possess, and the
teacher monitors every group and gives everyone their feedback in order to help them
improve. Also, students may ask the teacher’s help when they want to say something
that they do not know. The last part of the lesson is dedicated to a closer look at a
certain topic and teachers can correct the most common mistakes. Hopefully, by this
stage, the learners have already acquired the meaning of the new language because they
had to use it and now, instead of focusing on the meaning, they can focus on the form.
That is to say that, during most of the TBL lessons, students focus on meaning and
fluency and then on form and accuracy, which is the opposite of what happens in PPP.
In this case, lessons are not teacher-centred and there is a natural progression from the
general to the particular. However, this lesson shape may be more appropriate for
higher-level/secondary students because hopefully they have inner language to complete
the tasks and they do not need as much scaffolding as lower-level students.

Another method that could be used for teaching English is ESA. Engage, Study,
Activate is actually very similar to PPP, but the stages can be moved around. In this
case, the teacher begins the lesson by engaging the students to captivate their interest
and attention, and then they study a specific feature of language before being able to
activate what they have learned. This method could be very useful in the sense that,
according to Harjali, “Park (2003) on his research learning journal added that students
who actively engage with what they are studying tend to understand more, learn more,
remember more, enjoy it more and be more able to appreciate the relevance of what
they have learned.” (Harjali 2017, p.2). Briefly, this method can be an excellent option
for teaching English because everything is easier when teachers know what their
students like and can captivate their interest and attention. Learners will be paying more
attention to every stage of the lesson, actively participating, and having fun at the same
time. Besides that, when they feel that what they are learning is important and that they
can use it in real-life communication, they will learn it better.

Finally, Scrivener himself suggested another alternative to PPP, which is

Authentic use, Restricted use, Clarification (ARC). Its title is self-explanatory, and this
method is very similar to PPP. However, it is much more flexible because it is possible
to reorder its stages. In this case, at the beginning of the lesson, students engage in freer
practice activities where they can explore all the language that they pretend to use,
focusing themselves on meaning. Subsequently, they concentrate on restricted use and
consequently on form. Towards the end of the lesson, teachers clarify every doubt to
make sure that their students do not commit the same mistakes. As Scrivener stated, “By
ordering the ARC components in different ways we can describe a wide variety of
lessons. […] This route-map is essentially the same as PPP. The difference here is that
the components can easily be reordered, or added to, or omitted.” (Scrivener 1994,
p.18). Thus, Scrivener probably considers PPP “disabling” for all the disadvantages that
were mentioned above and because it is too rigid and inflexible. He does not discredit
PPP in its entirety, as he suggested a very similar method. Nonetheless, he believes that
no method should be completely fixed. Teachers should be able to reorder the stages if
they feel that it would be good for their students.

In summary, Scrivener may consider PPP disabling due to its tendency to isolate
and teach language features separately, its teacher-centred nature, and its inflexibility.
Nevertheless, there are many alternatives to PPP such as TBL, ESA and ARC. Also, it is
essential to remember that a teacher is not forced to choose only one method. They can
use many different methods depending on the context and the learners’ needs and level.
Hence the possibility of adopting PPP to teach a lesson, and TBL to teach another one.
Teachers must adopt an eclectic approach to try to please and help as many learners as
they can.