Article published in:
Language Teaching for Young Learners
Vol. 3:1 (2021) ► pp. 93–116
Original Research Article

PPP in action

Insights from primary EFL lessons in Vietnam

| An Giang University
| Victoria University of Wellington

The presentation-practice-production (PPP) approach is used in primary schools in Vietnam to teach speaking skills. However, there is disagreement about the theoretical validity and practical efficacy of PPP (Ellis, 2018; Willis & Willis, 2007) and little research evidence for how teachers actually implement PPP and their views of this approach. The current study addresses this gap. Seven teachers from six primary schools in Vietnam were observed teaching 11 PPP speaking lessons and were then interviewed on their experience of teaching the lessons. Analysis of the observation data showed that all seven teachers followed all three phases of the PPP sequence in their lessons. However, they frequently added interactive activities to the presentation phase and adapted production activities to make them more communicative. The teachers held mixed views of PPP: Three spoke positively of its value for lower level classes, another teacher was somewhat neutral while the remaining three teachers were dismissive of it and actively sought to adopt a more communicative approach. Overall, findings from the study reveal limitations of the PPP approach as it is practiced in this context and highlight affordances for making PPP more communicative, including drawing on principles of effective task design.

Keywords: presentation-practice-production (PPP), textbooks, speaking lessons, primary schools, task-based language teaching (TBLT), Vietnam
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1The PPP approach
    • 2.2Classroom implementation of PPP
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1The context
    • 3.2Teacher participants
    • 3.3Data collection and analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Teachers’ PPP practices and the rationales of their implementation decisions
      • 4.1.1Presentation
      • 4.1.2Practice
      • 4.1.3Production
    • 4.2Teachers’ perceptions of the PPP approach
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 16 April 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/ltyl.19015.bui
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PPP in action
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