PPP Revisited (2025 Reflection)

Back in 2011, I wrote the article below after confessing to a colleague that I was skeptical about the Presentation–Practice–Production (PPP) model. She was surprised — CELTA had drilled it into her as the (one and only) way to teach.

Reading my own words now, 14 years later, I see that much of my frustration with PPP is still alive in today’s TEFL debates. Teachers still wrestle with coursebooks that feel too narrow, with students who can’t “produce on demand,” and with methods that sometimes ignore the messy reality of acquisition.

So I’m republishing this post as it first appeared — raw, unpolished, and very much “me” from that time. I’ve added a short 2025 note at the end to say where I stand today.

This article was written when I mentioned my skepticism regarding PPP to a colleague of mine, and she was puzzled as CELTA had taught her to use PPP. It took, however, more than 3 months to write… Not that I was doing any research – this one is in no way a well-grounded scientific paper. It is, rather, some summary, more or less structured, of my thoughts about the subject. It’s for my school’s teachers, and anyone interested.

1.       PRESENTATION

a). What do we present? How do we decide what language exactly is needed by the student? One option is to be based on the course book. Course books have been designed by clever people, you know. Respectable institutions are working on the syllabuses, why bother and re-invent the bicycle?

Without trying to underestimate the immense work done by linguists on developing standards and designing coursebooks, I have to admit that I personally have to amend at least 40 to 70(!) % of ANY coursebook I have used (and I have used a lot of coursebooks).

• Too little attention is still given to many widely used patterns such as prepositional phrases, the “for-to” pattern, the complex object, cleft sentences, emphatic constructions – you name it. This leaves the students handicapped until very late, upper-intermediate or even advanced stages, and if you keep noticing that, despite their hard work for a year or so, your pre-intermediate students are struggling and become demotivated, think – isn’t it due to you following the standard syllabus, which leaves so many useful, even indispensable! –  things – until later?
• The same is true about vocabulary, prepositions, set phrases with articles, etc, etc.
• No mother tongue specifics are taken into consideration. Yet, what is easy for a French person may be beyond comprehension for a Russian, and vice versa.

>One way I try to deal with it is to introduce an array of useful patterns, normally taught at later stages, rather early, the result being SS slowly but surely acquiring more tools for expressing themselves, and the effectiveness improving.

> I try to make room for these additional patterns by omitting whole sections of a coursebook, such as too much work on narrative tenses, or reported speech, which can easily be simplified or done without (as we see real English used in real life). Some topics, some boring texts – lots can be, indeed, omitted harmlessly.

> I am still constantly faced with the ever-growing “syllabus tree”, with the additional patterns I need, since every topic will call for more and more essential constructions. That eventually becomes difficult to handle, and better coursebooks are, perhaps, needed to help us cope.

b). When we base our presentation on recorded or printed texts, coursebooks force us to focus on the pattern in question, plus, maybe, a handful of topical vocabulary. Look at the text, however. There’s, in fact, a wealth of useful and necessary stuff. The PPP lesson framework will simply allow no room for working with those. That will leave so many questions unanswered, so many hypotheses unverified, and so many patterns unacquired. Is that efficient? I doubt it.

c). Some more recent coursebooks are trying to cope with these deficiencies by highlighting additional patterns. Yet, even all of those taken together, that is not nearly enough to really move from level to level. The extra tidbits will be highlighted – but what about acquiring them?  Imagine we had to work with every single pattern we need using the PPP model. That will add at least several dozen lessons to the course book. Is that possible at all? We therefore have to invent more intensive ways of getting SS to acquire the necessary patterns.

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2.       PRACTICE.

It is assumed that practice will make the subsequent usage of the patterns automatic. If the practice is meaningful, the usage is supposed to be meaningful. And automatic. There are different ways to practice whatever:

• Receptive practice (listening and reading comprehension, highlighting the target structure)
• Written drills (gapfills, sentence transformations, etc)
• Oral drills (repetition, substitution, communicative drills)
• Writing paragraphs and longer chunks, etc.

However, armed with PPP as our main tool, we will need to drill EVERY SINGLE variant that a student may need. E.g., make an “I’m wearing… ” sentence with every single item of clothing they have learned, + repeat the same for other persons, singular and plural… Is that ever possible? Something like that used to be done back in the 60s as part of the Audio-Lingual method and was largely abandoned (as too immense a task). A course book today will offer a couple of exercises of 7 – 15 sentences (phrases) in each per pattern, plus a few in the workbook, plus another one online, which is not nearly enough even for “rough” practice using PPP. Additional materials will help, but how much time will it take to drill everything that needs drilling?  Will uttering/writing every possible variant once only be enough to make it automatic? The answer is, NO. What is the purpose of the practice exercises, then? In no way is it possible to do that within a 2-hour lesson. Every teacher has faced that.

“Why are some of my students coping so much better than others in the same group, then – PPP seems to be working pretty well for them? “ – you may ask. In my observation, those coping better are in reality at a different stage of their learning – eg, they’d been studying English for 4 years prior to enrolling in your group, but with fewer chances to practice their theory. What they are doing at your lessons is largely reinforcing and really practising the patterns. Others struggle.

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3.       PRODUCTION.

Production is supposed to result from practice. IT DOES NOT.

• We have all seen and felt that the practice stage cannot fit into a 2-hour lesson, and that even huge homework may not be enough for the SS to stop making errors in the pattern in question, and that there is a wealth of patterns in English which can possibly not be practiced “audio-lingually” or in written form to ensure their automation.
• Production results from acquisition. Acquisition does not directly result from learning.
•  Hence, production is not the result of learning (P – P – P fashion). (If puzzled – please consult the link. Then, come back).

Have you ever noticed sudden breakthroughs in your students? Sudden surges in understanding, insights, fluency rocketing overnight, as it seems, after months of “two steps forward – one step back” learning?  If not – keep a closer eye on your students – and you will.  On a graph, a learner’s progress will most often be shown as a series of stairs rather than a continuous curve or a slanted line. Slow-slow-slow – ROCKET! Then, slow-slow again…   Are those surges helped by constant practice? Yes and no. Rather, in my opinion, they are a result of very complex interactions of various cognitive and emotional mechanisms, of which logic and thinking are only a small part. And – EXPOSURE.

• PPP rushes the students into production far too early. It ignores the need to HEAR and SEE the target structures in comprehensible contexts, many, many, many times before acquiring them and becoming capable of producing them.
• I have found that PPP works best with students taking the same level a second time. They will have seen and heard the language over the previous year, but, as should have been expected, were struggling to use it. This time, having had enough exposure, they start to actually use the language as PPP refreshes the knowledge, makes it more systemic, boosts confidence, and fosters production.

Is PPP dead? It is not. Is it suitable for each and every student, each and every background and personality? It is not, either.

This was written in 2011, and I’d phrase it differently now, but I still stand by the point. What do you think?