Is PPP dead?

Jeremy Harmer

The teacher begins to draw on the board: some lines, a curve. She encourages the
students to guess what she is doing or to ask questions ‘Is it a football? Is it a face?’ etc.
It is a face and she and the class establish a name for it, Peter. Now the teacher draws
vertical lines across Peter so that he ends up like this:

The teacher and the students establish that Peter is in prison and then through
explanation, gesture and mime she gets over the meaning of the sentence ‘He can’t
drink beer’. After modelling the sentence - and isolating parts of it, e.g. can’t = cannot
- she gets students to repeat in chorus before asking for individual repetition.

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Soon there are six statements about Peter (He can’t drive his car but he can watch TV
in the prisoner’s lounge etc) which the teacher uses to get quick and accurate
repetition/practice.

Finally the teacher asks students to say some of things they can and cannot do in
law/school etc, for example I can buy food in the canteen but I can’t take it into the library.
Later, perhaps the students write sentences.

Most teachers will recognise this simple (and simplistic?) teaching sequence as an
example of PPP: presentation (setting up the situation, modelling the new language),
practice (controlled and accurate drilling of six sentences) and production (students
making ‘real’ sentences about themselves).

PPP is frequently used for grammar patterns, dialogues and even vocabulary teaching.
It is one of the methodological sequences which has gained most acceptance
throughout the English-Language-Teaching world as any glance at textbooks will
show.

PPP under attack

In the last few years, however, PPP has come under concerted attack. Is it the best
way to teach/learn new language? Can language be cut up into little bits anyway?
Does PPP actually work? Michael Lewis has no doubts: ‘...the model (PPP) is
discredited and reflects neither the nature of language nor the nature of learning.’
(Lewis 1993:190). More recently Scrivener (1994a), Willis (1994) and Woodward (1993),
for example, have ganged up to attack it even more forcefully. Woodward writes:

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 (The ‘PPP’) model seems to be firmly rooted in the tradition of thought
springing from Descartes who believed that things should be ‘divided up
the better to study them’. This analytic view of study is in contrast to the
growing feeling in our own time that more holistic or ecological ways of
looking at interlocking variables and systems might be healthier. (1993:3)

Willis lists six things that are wrong with PPP, but Scrivener (1994a) tops the bill with
8, accusing PPP of being theoretically groundless, of making assumptions about
‘straight-line learning’, of being based on sentence-level theories of language and
much more. Most damningly he writes that it ‘..is fundamentally disabling, not
enabling.’ (1994: 15).

Leaving aside the fact that this may come as a surprise to the many hundreds of
thousands of students who have managed to progress despite having been subjected
to such discredited disablement, one cannot help feeling along with Hopkins (1995)
that sustained criticism of PPP may be somewhat exaggerated. As he writes:

No language course these days offers an undiluted diet of the dry

meaningless PPP structured lessons that so many commentators like to
set up as a straw-man foe. (1995:11)

Indeed even ten years ago descriptions of PPP were more flexible than critics seem to
imply. Byrne (1986) swaps the ‘straight line’ of Presentation-Practice and Production
for a flexible circle like this:

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 Production Presentation

Practice

so that a teaching sequence might start with a role-play, for example (production) and
as a result of problems encountered there the teacher might then (re)-present some
language before organising a bit of practice. The same three elements are present, but
their variable sequencing allows for a range of teaching options.

Describing teaching sequences

The need to describe teaching sequences - both for trainees and as principles to guide
materials writers - has led many of PPP’s critics to propose alternative models
themselves. And even those of us who are not prepared to be so destructively
dogmatic about teaching practices which have served teachers and learners well over
the years recognise the need to re-position contemporary versions of PPP in a wider
methodological framework. Such a framework will include PPP as one of many

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procedures which modern EFL teachers have at their disposal. PPP is not discredited,
in our view, though its use may be considerably more restricted than it was twenty
years ago!

The rest of this article will look at alternatives to PPP and try to assess their claims to
be an all-inclusive methodology.

Task-based learning

All people need to learn a language; according to Pit Corder (1986) is exposure to it
and a reason for learning it. Willis (forthcoming) suggests three basic qualities for
language learners outside classrooms: Exposure to the language, Motivation to learn it
and opportunities to Use it. Task-based learning provides those three conditions and,
in some versions, claims to sidestep and ignore the more traditional syllabus-based
presentation and practice. The extraordinary Bangalore Project, described in many
articles and memorably in Prabhu (1987) made just such claims.

Other writers on task-based learning have seen the need for some kind of language
study, however. Willis (1994 and forthcoming) suggests a fourth stage when
languages are learnt inside a classroom. After students are exposed to language, plan
their own task and report on its execution they then listen to fluent speakers doing the
same task to compare their versions. They are in a position to do some Language
Analysis - what Willis calls ‘Review and planning.’

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Willis’ version of task-based learning is, in the words of a trainee in Turkey ‘...like a
sort of PPP upside down. The steps are there, but in a different order.’ (Willis 1984:19)

Task-based learning has many advantages, of course. It allows students to see the
relevance of their study, it may well be motivating (though of course that depends
upon the task, the class and the teacher), and the way students process language
during task planning and execution is seen as beneficial for language, personal and
intellectual development.

Two caveats occur to me, however. Firstly the completion of meaningful tasks
depends upon the students’ language ability before they start. For beginners, therefore,
the range of motivating tasks may be limited. On top of that the procedure may be
time-consuming where other more standard routines may help students learn more
quickly. Task-based learning may feel better, in other words, but is it any more
efficient?

Nevertheless Task-based learning is a powerful alternative to PPP-type lessons,

especially for students at higher levels.

The impact of discovery techniques

One of the big movements in the 1980s was the utilisation of ‘discovery’ learning.
Lewis (1986) echoed the prevailing mood when he wrote that

All learning theory suggests that those things we discover for ourselves
are more firmly fixed in our minds than those which we are 'told'....In

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 place of blind 'learning', the emphasis has moved to the process of
exploration which leads to genuine understanding. (1986: )

Despite the fact that the evidence is somewhat sketchy, we have accepted the
philosophical claims for the superiority of finding things out for ourselves. Students
are not so readily persuaded, however, as Fortune found out (Fortune 1992). When he
asked his subjects to choose between a basic transmission model (PPP) of teaching on
the one hand and student-centred discovery on the other 68% of them initially chose
the former!

Nevertheless, discovery has become a focus for learning and it forms a part of a more
reflective methodology. For example Lewis’ 3 stages for language learning - OHE -
(Lewis 1993) comprise Observation of language, Hypothesis-formation on the basis
of that observation and Experimentation to see if the hypotheses are correct.

This kind of discovery-based observation gains added impetus with studies showing
how real language use - especially spoken language - differs markedly from the tidier
structure-based organisation of many traditional materials. Maule (1988) sat watching
his television writing down any if-sentences he heard. He found that the construction
of such sentences was usually very different from the 3-conditional description found
in many textbooks. Yule et al (1992) observed that people don’t seem to report direct
speech in the ways we teach EFL students to do., quoting examples of real language
use where American English speakers are just as likely to use ‘to be like’ (I’m like ‘you
OK?’ and he’s like ‘yeah I’m OK’) as they are to use ‘say’ and ‘tell’.

Most recently Carter & McCarthy (1995) and McCarthy & Carter (1995) have
demonstrated how, on the basis of a relatively small corpus of spoken language, the
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rules of spoken grammar are uniquely different from the more formalised patterns
which are often laid before students in syllabuses and textbooks. Their
methodological response to this is to propose a new procedure, III. In McCarthy &
Carter, examples show the model in operation where students are provided with an
Illustration of language (they read the transcript of a conversation), and then take
part in an Interaction with it (they discuss what words - like auxiliaries and subjects -
are left out) before becoming aware of how the language works so that Induction of
the rules they have discovered through illustration and interaction may take place.

Such reflective discovery has much to recommend it. It allows students to be reflective,
to ‘think about’ the language and it gives them a chance to see ‘real’ language at work
as an alternative to the sanitised examples some textbooks and teachers provide. But
there are problems too: language discovery is less impressive at lower levels - where it
is more difficult to provide comprehensible authentic illustration - than at higher ones.
Nor have we decided whether we want to actually teach aspects of spoken interaction
or just have the students notice it. And despite the pioneering work of Tribble & Johns
(1990) evidence from language corpuses has not yet been made ‘friendly’ enough for
general student use. Finally in Carter & McCarthy’s work we may question how much
benefit is gained (for speakers of ‘non-native’ English) from studying a restricted
variety of informal spoken English of a particularly British kind.

ARC

One of PPP’s fiercest critics, Jim Scrivener, has provided us with his own model, ARC
(Scrivener 1994a & b). This stands for Authentic Use of language (the kind of
language used in communicative or creative tasks), Restricted use (which describes

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the kind of language used for controlled practice, in some course books and for tests,
for example) and Clarification and focus (which refers to the language which is used
to explain, demonstrate, give rules, provide substitution tables etc). For Scrivener
lessons can be described in various ways by stringing together these 3 elements in
various different orders, e.g. CRA (similar to PPP), RCR, CRCRCRCR etc. In Scrivener
(1994b) he also provides global models of lessons, making a useful distinction
between ‘Logical line’ lessons (probably CRRA) and ‘Ragbag’ lessons, for example.i

ARC seems to be a refreshing way of re-looking at the elements that have always been
present in EFL lessons, though the three categories seem difficult to sustain at the
margins. At what point, for example, does clarification and explanation become non-
authentic? Why is repetition not part of ‘restricted’ language use? How does the ARC
model account for the mental processes involved in Authentic use - which may
involve internal or external clarification/restricted language etc? And how different is
it from the PPP circle that Byrne presented us with?

Despite some doubts, however, ARC does provide a useful focus for differentiating
language used in the classroom

ESA

One element which may perhaps have received less attention than it deserves is that
of student engagement or involvement. In Harmer & Rossner (1991) and Harmer
(forthcoming) three key elements of language learning sequences are isolated. The
starting point for such an abstraction is the belief that if students are not engaged, if
they weren’t involved in the process, heart and soul; there isn’t much point in going

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on. Those who are familiar with left- and right-hand brain theories and the distinction
which is made by Storr (1992) amongst others between logic and emotion will recognise
that successful language learning experiences benefit from having both. All lessons
have to engage students and Engage therefore becomes one key element of the model.

A key part of all lessons is the stage where students activate their knowledge, either to
enable them to process written and spoken text for its meaning or, conversely, to
express their desired meanings themselves. Reading to understand and/or react to
content is an activate activity: so is writing a poem or pursuing a passionate argument.
Reading to understand minutiae or see how anaphoric reference works is not. Neither
are invitation dialogues to practise would like and/or the present continuous.

All lessons need some kind of Activate activity both for motivational reasons and for
the mental processes that such exercises provoke. Perhaps Activate techniques really
do provide what Ellis called a ‘switch’ from learnt to acquired language (Ellis 1982): at
the very least the choice of the best language to express meaning requires the flexing
of the mental ‘muscles’, thus provoking intellectual fitness.

Most, if not all lessons, also require at least some opportunity for Study, however
small that may be. However many routes there are to learning and acquisition, one of
them is to get students to focus in on constructional aspects of grammar, lexis,
pronunciation and style. Students frequently demand (with justification) such
teaching: we would be foolish not to provide it. Study can be provided through
transmission (the explanation & practice of PPP) in Willis’ language analysis way or
by the use of discovery techniques.

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ESA in use

The ESA model itself has three main realisations. In the first (‘Straight Arrows’ - see
figure 1) the teachers gets students engaged in the lesson, study takes place and some
activation then results. A typical example might be: students look at a picture to guess
what’s going on (engage), a dialogue and drill offers students knowledge of (and
practice in) apologising (study). Students then role-play apologising for being late
(activate).

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 ENGAGE

STUDY

ACTIVATE

Figure 1: Straight Arrows

In the second type of lesson (‘The Boomerang’ - see figure 2), once the students’
engagement is assured, the class can move straight into an activate stage. Depending
on what happens here the teacher may move back to a ‘study’ session to clear up
problems that have arisen during the activate session. In essence this reflects Task-
based procedures and even Byrne’s PPP circle when the sequence starts with
production. A typical example of the Boomerang might be: students tell each other
what they think of fortune telling and if they have ever experienced it (engage), they
then role-play a fortune-telling encounter (activate) and then (if - and only if - the
teacher thinks it necessary) they listen to a ‘fortune-telling dialogue and extract
language they need (study)
ENGAGE

STUDY

ACTIVATE

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Figure 2: the Boomerang (ENGAGE- Then ACTIVATE, then STUDY)

In the third type of lesson (Patchwork, named after the multi-coloured quilts made up
of bits and scraps into a harmonious whole - see figure 3) engagement is taken as a
starting point, but from there the lesson may go in a number of different ways -
straight to an activate, back to something designed to re-engage and then into a
period of study etc etc. An example of such a lesson might be a quick discussion of
who (if anybody) sunbathes and why (engage), a quick word-formation activity (study),
a discussion about the dangers/enjoyment etc of the occupation (activate), and a
personal response to a reading about sunbathing (activate), reading for detailed
comprehension (study). Students say where they fit on the reading description of skin
types (activate) and then look at a particular feature of grammar which comes up
(study) and then........

ENGAGE

STUDY

ACTIVATE

Figure 3: Patchwork (example route- SEE Description above)

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The point of the ESA model(s) is to offer a global view of classroom practice, an easy
mnemonic and a principled abstraction for trainees and others to get hold of. It is a
model based on class management which can comfortably encompass task-based
learning, PPP and/or Carter & McCarthy’s specific suggestions about the study of
language corpora, for example. Whatever kind of language is being considered, and at
whatever level, the three elements can and should always be present. More than
anything else it focuses attention on the need to involve students. Like faith, hope and
charity engage-activate-study seeks to become an article of faith, and the greatest of all
these three is engage!

Conclusion

This article has studied the various attempts to describe the process of learning and
teaching - descriptions which have had, as their main aim, explanations of what is
happening so that other researchers and teachers can be helped to perform their tasks
more successfully. It is one of the glories of EFL that so many people re-assess what
the discipline consists of so passionately and so often.

The greatest shift in language teaching over the last few years has been the movement
away from one rigid model of what happens in each and every class. Indeed the job of
modern methodologists and trainers, it seems to me, is to expose their audiences to
the diversity of procedures and techniques which are now available. As such the
models mentioned here are valuable contributions to our understanding.

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The problem remains, however, that the individual procedures may not be all things
to all men and women, despite their reach for global coverage. On the contrary, the III
of Carter and McCarthy looks, at present, to be a concern for students at higher levels
of proficiency, and, despite the insightful benefits it affords both teachers and
students, so far says nothing about the output from such study. PPP (wearing its
humane face) seems to be an entirely appropriate model for some clearly defined rule-
based grammar at lower levels of competence - though not for all. Its limitations, as
this article has been at pains to point out, are well-documented. But it is not dead.
Happily alive, PPP will always have a part to play in language teaching and learning.

Various forms of task-based procedures appear to have an increasing pay-off as the

students’ level increases rather than being seen as a model to follow at lower levels,
and the ‘A’ of ARC likewise comes into play more successfully as students progress.

What we need is a model which is wide enough to encompass all these sequences and
approaches. Like some of the other models mentioned here ESA is an attempt to
provide this. It describes, at a macro level, the various global options available to
teachers in classrooms. Task-based learning fits within an ESA framework. So does
PPP and ARC and OHE and III! Perhaps it might be the description to use.

And there’s one last question: why does everyone describe teaching in 3 stages (rather
than two or four or five)?!

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References

Byrne, D (1986) Teaching Oral English: new edition. Longman handbooks for
Language teachers.
Carter, R & M McCarthy (1995)Grammar and the spoken language (Applied Linguistics
16/2)
Ellis, R (1982) Informal and formal approaches to communicative language
teaching. (ELT Journal 36/2 )
Fortune, A (1992) Self-study grammar practice: learners' views and preferences
(ELT Journal 46/2)
Harmer, J & R Rossner (1991) More Than Words. Book 1. Longman.
Harmer, J (1991) The Practice of English Language Teaching: new edition.
Longman Handbooks for Language Teachers.
Harmer, J (forthcoming) How to TEFL. Longman.
Hopkins, A (1995) Revolutions in ELT materials? (Modern English Teacher 4/3)
Lewis, M (1986) The English Verb. Language Teaching Publications.
Lewis, M (1993) The Lexical Approach. LTP Teacher Training
Maule, D (1988) “Sorry, but if he comes I go”: teaching conditionals. (ELT
Journal 42/2 )
McCarthy, M & R Carter (1995)Spoken grammar: what is it and how can we teach it?
(ELT Journal 49/3)
Pit Corder, S (1986) Talking Shop (ELT Journal 40/3
Prabhu, N (1987) Second Language Pedagogy. Oxford University Press.
Scrivener, J (1994a) PPP & After. (The Teacher Trainer 8/1)
Scrivener, J (1994b) Learning Teaching. Heinemann
Storr, A (1992) Music and the mind. Harper Collins.
Tribble & Jones (1990) Concordances in the classroom. Longman.
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Willis, J (forthcoming) Task-based language Teaching. Longman
Willis, J (1994) Task-based language learning as an alternative to PPP. (The
Teacher Trainer 8/1)
Woodward, T (1993) Changing the basis of pre-service TEFL training in the UK.
(IATEFL TT SIG 13)
Yule, G, Mathis, T & M Hopkins (1992) On reporting what was said (ELT Journal
46/3)

i
I do, however, find it difficult to accept Scrivener’s suggestion that ‘Jungle path’ lessons
(where teachers go into class unprepared and ‘teach’ on the basis of what comes up from
their students) are the only ones which can be described as ‘person-centred.’

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