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The PPP model to teaching grammar: Evidence from Indonesian contexts of the
effectiveness of explicit teaching instructions

Article  in  Asian EFL Journal · May 2019

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 Asian EFL Journal Research Articles. Vol. 23 Issue No. 3.4 May 2019

The PPP model to teaching grammar: Evidence from Indonesian contexts of the
effectiveness of explicit teaching instructions

Muhammad Ahkam Arifina, Erwin Hafidb, and Sitti Nurpahmic

Institut Parahikma Indonesiaa, Universitas Islam Negeri Alauddin Makassar, Indonesiabc

Bio-profiles:

Muhammad Ahkam Arifin is a permanent lecturer at English Teaching Faculty at Institut

Parahikma Indonesia. His research interest is currently on technology and language learning.
For research collaboration, he can be contacted via ahkam.arifin@parahikma.ac.id or
ahkam.arifin@gmail.com

Dr. Erwin Hafid is a senior lecturer at Universitas Islam Negeri Alauddin Makassar,
Indonesia. He has published a number of books and journals with the topics not only on English
teaching but also on Islamic studies. For research collaboration, he can be contacted via
erwin.hafid@uin-alauddin.ac.id.

Dr. Sitti Nurpahmi is a permanent lecturer at Universitas Islam Negeri Alauddin Makassar,
Indonesia. Her doctorate research was specifically upon Bilingualism, yet she is also open for
research collaboration in other topics related to linguistics and English teaching studies. For
research collaboration, she can be contacted via sitti.nurpahmi@uin-alauddin.ac.id.

Abstract

The current study was expected to see how a deductive approach in teaching grammar,
PPP (Presentation, Practice, Production), could help develop university students` mastery in
Subject-Verb Agreement. The research design was a quasi-experimental design. The study was
conducted at the second-semester students of English Education, Universitas Islam Negeri
Alauddin Makassar. Among four classes as the population, two classes with seventy-eight
students were selected as the sample of the research. One of the two classes was the
experimental class, and the other became the controlled class. The data were collected through
an error analysis test. mastery in subject-verb agreement was
poor in the pre-test. Most students got very low scores, and none of them could reach a fair or
higher level. After the treatment of the PPP approach, the experimental group scores rose
significantly. 34% of the students reached fairly good to a very good level and 53 % of other
students got fair and poor scores. On the other hand, the controlled group both in the pretest
and posttest achieved scores from fairly good to excellent category. Most of the students got
very poor scores and less than 11% of the students could reach both fair and poor scores. It

rmance in the posttest.

Keywords: PPP approach, grammar, implicit and explicit instructions

Introduction

The three authors found that English students at English Education of Teaching Science
Faculty, Alauddin State Islamic University Makassar had problems with their grammar
accuracy in writing. This was particularly in terms of their use of subject-verb agreement, that
is, students were found to incorrectly use plural verbs for singular subjects or singular verbs
for plural subjects. The authors, who were the students` lecturers, were specifically concerned
over the fact that the students` lack of understanding in subject-verb agreement could lead to
difficulties for readers understanding their writing. Thus, the current research aimed to improve
students` grammar understanding and accuracy. To narrow the scope, the researchers decided
to specifically focus upon implementing the traditional PPP (presentation, production, and
practice) to teaching grammar in helping students` mastery over subject-verb agreement.

Although the PPP model as a deductive and explicit approach to teaching grammar has
received much criticism (e.g., Tomlinson, Dat, Masuhara, & Rubdy, 2001), there has been
increasing support over the `reuse` of the PPP approach. Norris and Ortega (2000) and Spada
and Yasuyo (2010) conducted meta-analysis research studies comparing the effectiveness
between the expect and implicit approaches to teaching grammar. Both of the studies found
that research studies in general have been in favour of explicit instructions and reported that
explicit approaches to teaching grammar were not found to be less effective than implicit
techniques.

The support of the PPP-type lesson is further emphasized by Anderson (2016) who
claimed that the PPP model is especially effective for classes over 30 students with learners
having the same native language and only with a few hours of instruction per week.
Considering that the contexts of the classes of the current research participants are similar to
the types of contexts that Anderson claimed to be appropriate for a more explicit instruction
type of techniques to teaching grammar, the researchers hypothesised that the PPP could be
beneficial to help their students learn grammar more effectively. Thus, the current research
aimed to explore how the PPP model as the dependent variable could affect students` mastery
in learning subject-verb agreement as the independent variable.

Participants

The research participants were two registered classes of English Education of Teaching
Science Faculty, Alauddin State Islamic University Makassar. One class as the control group
consisted of 35 students, whereas the other class as the experimental group was 40 students.
Because of the incomplete data, nevertheless, 9 students` data in the control class and 2
students` data in the experimental class were excluded for the data analysis. Hence, the
participants were 64 in total comprising 26 and 38 students for the control and experimental
classes respectively.

Research Design

The design of the research was quasi-experimental design (the pretest-posttest non-
equivalent group design). The researchers attempted to determine whether the traditional PPP
approach (the independent variable) could affect students` mastery in subject-verb agreement
(the independent variable). Pretest and posttest with 50 grammar questions on subject-verb
agreement in the form of error analysis were distributed to both the experimental and control
groups. Only was the experimental group given treatment with 3 meetings learning subject-
verb agreement, each lasting 90 minutes.

The implementation of PPP

Presentation

Within this procedure, the teacher explicitly presented the grammar topic, subject-verb
agreement. The teacher specifically used examples, charts, and notes to help students
understand the grammar material.

Practice

In this stage, the students made their first efforts in using the target grammar in
meaningful but controlled contexts. The teacher provided written exercises to help student
directly practice their understanding after the teacher`s presentation. The students were given
written exercises. Prior to the last phase, grammar production, the teacher provided feedback

Production

Within this stage, students were then given a certain topic for them to discuss. Students
were specifically encouraged to utilise their understanding of subject-verb agreement. From
this, the teacher took notes for the corrective feedback at the end of the class.

Results

As shown within Table 1, the mean score of the experimental class was 34.8 (SD 12.7)
in the pretest and 58.2 (SD 14.2) in
the experimental group between the pretest and posttest was 23.4. On the other hand, the mean
score of the controlled class was 41.2 (SD 10.8) in the pretest and 41.9 (SD 13.2) in the posttest.

posttest was 0.7. Thus, it can be seen that the experimental group appeared to increase
significantly with the gap score of 23.4, whereas the experimental group only showed a very
slight increase with the gap score of 0.7.
Table 1

Descriptive statistics for pre-test and post-test results.

The table also showed that the minimum score of the students in the experimental group
was 4 (out of 50), whereas the maximum was 31. For the posttest, the minimum score was 7
and the maximum was 43. In contrast, for the control group the minimum score in the pretest
and posttest was 11 and 7 respectively, while the maximum score for the pretest and posttest
was 31 and 32 respectively. Overall, the standard deviation was found to be nearly similar for
the pretest and posttest both for the control and experimental group.

Table 2

T-test scores

For the level of significance (p) 0, 05 and the degree of freedom (df) (N1 + N2)-2 = (38
+ 26) 2 = 62, Table 2 showed that the value of the t-test was higher than t-table, as can be
seen in Table 2. The result of the test appeared to show that there was a significant difference
It
indicated that the PPP approach could be benefi

Discussion and conclusion

The results of the study seem to show that the PPP model is effective in developing
students` mastery of subject-verb agreement. Thus, the current findings support other previous
studies (Norris & Ortega, 2000) (Spada & Yasuyo, 2010) (Anderson, 2016)that have shown
the effectiveness of a deductive and explicit approach to teaching grammar. The current study
did not aim to compare the difference between explicit and implicit instruction for grammar
classes; thus, the findings did not intend to make any efforts to claim whether one type of
instructions is more effective than the other. Nevertheless, it could become evidence that the
PPP model is no less effective than other instructions that focus more upon implicit approaches
( Tomlinson, Dat, Masuhara, & Rubdy, 2001). Hence, the current study can become a rebuttal
for those who claim that explicit teaching techniques for grammar classes do not effectively
and significantly help students` understanding.

It could be speculated that the differences between the effectiveness of different

approaches to teaching grammar could have many reasons. One reason could be that it depends
upon how the teachers implement the teaching techniques within their classes. It could be
because of the different size of the classes; some teachers have to deal with more than 30
students within one class, whereas others may have fewer students. Moreover, students`
expectations of their classes and teachers could also explain these phenomena, that is, some
students come to class may expect to be able to speak English, while others want to focus upon
certain elements of the languages. On top of all these, students may also have different types
of motivations that could impact the results of their achievement. Thus, further studies may
need to control any variables that could influence the study results.

The authors remind the readers that the current study is to show that the PPP model
could be a beneficial alternative for grammar instructions. The findings should not be employed
as proof that the PPP model could be used to effectively teach English. In other words, the PPP
model may, or may not be, beneficial to teach language skills such as listening, reading,
writing, and speaking and other elements such as pronunciation, vocabularies, or idioms. Thus,
different purposes of instructions may need different teaching techniques.

Finally, the authors would advise teachers that the PPP model should not be fully
ignored particularly to teach grammar classes. The current study has yielded the results
showing the significance of this traditional grammar teaching method to teach grammar.
Curriculum experts in Indonesia specifically (Arifin, 2017) may also need to revisit how their
policies could impact teachers` training in teaching grammar. Further research studies may
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need to explore more on how different teachers, techniques, students, and research sites could
produce more data to support the idea that the PPP approach could be utilised for grammar
instructions.

References

Anderson, J. (2016). Why practice makes perfect sense: the past, present and potential future
of the PPP paradigm in language teacher education. ELT Education and Development,
19(1), 14-22.

Arifin, M. A. (2017). The teaching methodology and assessment of character education in

Indonesian English curriculum: Teacher`s perceptions. Asian EFL Journal, 10(1), 12-
28.

Norris, J. M., & Ortega, L. (2000). Effectiveness of L2 instruction: A research synthesis and
quantitative meta-analysis. Language Learning, 50(3), 417 528.

Spada, N., & Yasuyo, T. (2010). Interactions between type of instruction and type of language
feature: A meta-analysis. Language Learning, 60(2), 263-308.

Tomlinson, B., Dat, B., Masuhara, H., & Rubdy, R. (2001). EFL courses for adults. ELT
Journal, 55(1), 80-101.