What is the PPP approach to

language teaching?
This post tries to explain what is meant by the PPP approach to language
teaching. A brief explanation is provided followed by a description of the
advantages and disadvantages of this model of teaching.

Definition of PPP
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
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.

Merits
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:

o It is thought to reflect a so-called ‘logical’ or ‘plausible’ procedure of learning.

Production comes only after presentation and practice.
o 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.
o 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.
 Criticism

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.
That is, 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 in spite of 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’ encounter with learning opportunities. In fact, when presenting a bit of
language in isolation, we strip away other important features of language. This
leads to depriving students:

1. from comprehensible input, which might be of use to them

2. and 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.

Production
The audio-lingual method, however, doesn’t care much about the last P of the
PPP procedure which is 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 produce.

Personalization
The PPP paradigm lacks another (fourth) P: Personalization. We learn the
language to talk about our knowledge, experience, and feelings. The aim is to
be truthful and meaningful. This stage 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.