presentation, practice and production

PRESENTATION, PRACTICE, AND PRODUCTION

A variation on Audio-lingualism in British- based teaching and elsewhere is the procedure most often referred to as PPP, which stands for Presentation, practice, and production. In this procedure a situation which contextualizes the language to be taught. The language too, is the presented. The students now practice the language using accurate reproduction techniques such as choral repetition (where the students repeat a word, phrase, or sentence all together with the teacher “conducting”), individual repetition (where individual students repeat a word, phrase, or sentences at the teacher’s using), and cue-response drills (where the teacher gives a cue such as cinema, nominates a students by name or by looking or pointing, and the students makes the desired response, e.g. would you like to come to the cinema?). These have similarities with the classic kind of Audio-Lingual drill we saw above, but because they are contextualized by the situation that been presented, they carry more meaning than simple substitution drill. Later the students, using the new language, make sentences of their own, and this is referred to as production. The following elementary-level example demonstrates this procedure:

PRESENTATION:
The teacher shows the students the following picture and asks them whether the people in it are at work or on holiday to elicit the fact that they are on holiday.

The teacher points to the man and attempts to elicit the phrase He´s swimming by saying Can anybody tell me… he´s …? Or asking the question what´s he doing ... Anybody? The teacher then models the sentences (He´s swimming) before isolating the grammar she wants to focus on (he´s), distorting it (he´s… he is … he is), putting it back together again (he´s), and then giving the model in a natural way once more (Listen … He´s swimming… he´s swimming). She may accompany this demonstration of form rules by using some physical means such as bringing two hands (for he and is) together to show how the contraction works or by using the finger technique.

PRACTICE:
The teacher gets the students to repeat the sentences he´s swimming in chorus. She may then nominate certain students to repeat the sentence individually, and she corrects any mistakes she hears. Now she goes back and models more sentences from the picture (May’s reading a book, Paul and Sarah are playing cards, etc.), getting choral and individual repetition where she thinks this is necessary. Now she is in a position to conduct a slightly free kind of drill than the Audio-Lingual one above:
Teacher: can anyone tell me?... may?... yes, Sergio
Student: she´s reading a book.
Teacher: good. Etc.
In this cue-response drill the teacher gives the cue (Mary) before nominating a student (Sergio) who will give the response (she´s reading a book). By cueing before nominating she keeps everyone alert. She will avoid nominating students in a predictable order for the same reason.
Usually the teacher puts the students in pairs to practice the sentences a bit more before listening to a few examples just to check that the learning has been affective.

PRODUCTION:
The end point of the PPP cycle is production, which some trainers have called ‘immediate creativity’. Here the students are asked to use the new language (in this case the present continuous) in sentences of their own. For example, the teacher may get the students to imagine that are all in a holiday villa. They must now say what each of them is doing, e.g. Sergio’s reading a book, Juana’s sunbathing, etc, they might write a ‘holiday’ postcard home, e.g. it`s great here. The sun’s shining. Paul and Sarah are playing football… etc or, by changing the situation, they may be asked to say what they think their friends and relations are doing at that moment, e.g. My mother`s working at the hospital. My father’s driving to London. My sister’s studying. Etc.