What is ‘Presentation, Practice, Production’ (PPP)?

Presentation — Practice — Production (PPP) is a lesson structure, a way to order activities in your lessons.

Although quite old, and heavily criticised over the years, PPP is probably the most commonly used lesson structure in teaching English to foreign learners today. It’s also still widely taught to new teachers, and seen on initial teacher training courses like the CELTA and CertTESOL.

Most course books that you’re likely to use will structure their chapters in ways similar or the same as PPP, meaning that you’ll get a lot of exposure to this method.

As the name suggests, there are three stages to this lesson structure, which we’ll look at now.

The ‘Presentation’ Stage

This is where the language is introduced, or ‘presented’ to the learners, usually by way of introducing a context or situation. For example, you could:

• Tell or act out a short story or anecdote ( “I woke up this morning with a really bad cold… AHHH-CHOOO! I went to the doctor and…”)
• Play a short audio clip
• Show a clip from a movie or TV show
• Show objects you’ve brought in (e.g. newspaper cuttings, plane tickets, hobby materials)