The PPP Approach

A closer look at the presentation section of the PPP model in an elementary level lesson

The presentation is the most important part of your lesson. Do not rush through this part of the lesson; this is where you ensure your students gain the confidence to speak and use the language. Without sufficient time spent drilling, students will be unable to do the practice exercises.

In the presentation section of your lesson you need to show the meaning of the language, test the meaning of the language, drill the language, and make sure it is written up on the board, unless you are teaching very young children.

Show the meaning

Flashcards, mime and presenting the target language in a short conversation and in context, all help students to understand the meaning of language.
Words are meaningless on their own, so always try and put your sentences into a simple, natural conversation.

Let’s take a few simple sentences:
This is cat. (show a flashcard of a cat)
This is a dog (show flashcard of dog)
This is a rabbit (show flashcard of rabbit)

Make sure you drill each sentence.

Put your target language into a short conversation

Conversational language should be presented ideally in a short role-play; a question and answer scenario usually works well. It is not enough to write one short sentence on the board, when teaching a grammar-e.g. ‘This is a dog’. This could mean anything to the student, who is presented with this sentence for the first time.

So how do we put this into a short conversation, and how on earth does our brain make sense of this? Well, without banding about pseudo science, I prefer to think of it as simple logic.

What's this?

It's a _________________

Flashcard of dog!

Using concept checking questions to check meaning.

To test the logic or meaning of these sentences, we could do the following:

Show a flashcard, and wait for your students to say ‘This is a __________’. However, to double check whether students understand this sentence, we could show a flashcard of a cat and ask the question:
What's this? (look puzzled)
It's a dog,

However, just to double check your students have understood, we could also do the following:

Teacher shows flashcard of a rabbit:
T: Is this a cat? (points to the rabbit with puzzled look)
Sts: No.
Teacher: No it's not, it’s a rabbit (Teacher gets class to repeat, sentence)

Teacher shows flashcard of a dog:
T: Is this a cat?
Sts:Yes, it’s a dog
T: Yes, it’s a dog, that’ right!

Now the meaning of the sentence has been checked and both the meaning and structure reinforced.

Drilling (repetition)

Drilling is simply getting the class to repeat together the sentence they are learning (target language). This can be done gradually over the presentation part of your lesson. Individual students may find it intimidating if you, the teacher expect students to say the sentence by themselves in front of the class, so if you hear students getting the sentence wrong, try getting the class to repeat the sentence a couple of times, rather than embarrass the student. This also gives the class additional practice! However, some students may relish getting the opportunity to perform.

Showing how a sentence is structured

Short sentences such as ‘This is a cat’ can easily be written up on the board, and there is little room for confusion here.

What's this?
This is a cat
a dog
a monkey
an elephant

and
Is this a cat?
Yes it is. /No it isn’t.

So how can help students make sense of how a longer sentence and show its structure. Let's think about the following sentence:

Yesterday, Jean went to the park, with her friends.

To show how a sentence is structured (or built up) we can write it up with key questions, to help students understand how the sentence is structured. There is no need for grammatical terms, to further puzzle students!

When? Who did what? with whom?
Yesterday Jean went to the park with her friends
Last week I played tennis with Eva
Last Saturday Bob went shopping with Jean

Now, the sentence is broken up into logical chunks, and there are keywords at the top of each chunk to help the students understand which part of the sentence goes where