Session 3 The 3 Ps Approach (PPP)

3 Ps Overview
PPP is the traditional approach to language teaching.
PPP: presentation, practice and production. This methodological framework has dominated the

language teaching profession for a long time.

3 Ps Framework
Presentation Stage: The

teacher presents the form and use of a grammatical item. Practice Stage: The students practise this grammatical item using a variety of controlled and less controlled activities. Production Stage: The teacher sets up an activity which encourages students to use language (freely) and where they will produce the grammar previously studied and practised.

Presentation

Practice

Production

3 Ps Framework
A focused presentation stage is followed by practice activities. These practice activities are designed to enable learners to produce rapidly and easily the material which has been presented. In the production stage opportunities are provided to use language freely and flexibly in the expectation that this will consolidate what is being learned and extend its range of applicability.

3 Ps Advantages
1- It is very comforting for the teacher. The teacher is in charge of proceedings, and has a clear professional role which, in general, it is relatively easy to organize, since it requires the teacher to take the structure of the day and do whatever is necessary to ensure that the structure is learned.

3 Ps Advantages
2- The approach lends itself to accountability, since there will be clear and tangible lesson goals, which can then be evaluated. There is a belief that learners will learn what is taught in the order in which is taught.

3 Ps Advantages
3- There is the possibility of clear connection to the underlying theory. Learning is focused on rules which are the automatised as a set of habits.

Critics of the 3 Ps
Skehan (1996, p.18) indicated to major reasons for

discarding PPP: 1- the evidence in support of such an approach is unimpressive as levels of attainment in conventional foreign language learning are poor, and students commonly leave school with very little in the way of usable language. 2- the underlying theory for a PPP approach has now been discredited. The belief that a precise focus on a particular form leads to learning and automatization no longer carries much credibility in linguistics or psychology.

References
Skehan, P. (1996) A framework for the

implementation of task based instruction. Applied Linguistics 17: 38-62. Skehan, P. (1996) Second Language Acquisition Research and Task-Based Instruction. In Willis, J. and D. Willis. 1996. (eds). Challenge and Change in Language Teaching. Oxford: Macmillan Heinemann.

Next Session
Task-Based Learning Readings: Taking Communication to task (Klapper, J. 2003) Tasks in SLA and language pedagogy (Ellis, R. 2003) The TBL framework (Willis, J. 1996)