A video post plus a long comment debate. Defenders: PPP gives novice teachers a manageable lesson shape. Thornbury: a handy template that easily becomes a linear ‘delivery of grammar McNuggets’; the problem is often how it’s used.
Practical points from the thread
- Keep the first P short: presentation expands to fill the time.
- Contextualise the presentation (a scenario, acted or on video); personalise the practice.
- Use PPP moments inside a task or Dogme lesson for language that has just emerged.
- Upside-down PPP: start with production so it isn’t squeezed out (= TTT).
- Dave Dodgson uses PPP for discrete grammar when preparing Cambridge YL candidates.
Counterarguments
- Duncan (oxfordtefl): PPP misleads teachers about what makes a good lesson, frontloads the stage teachers do worst, and pushes language learners don’t need.
- Gaughan: the fault is in teacher decisions and initial training, not the structure.
- Thornbury: “a boring teacher would make even task-based learning boring.”
Connections
PPP produces language-like behaviour · Guided-discovery grammar sequence - meaning, noticing, controlled to free · Grammar McNuggets - discrete items vs corpus reality