Planning a grammar lesson

Without grammar, words hang together without any real meaning or sense. In order to be
able to speak a language to some degree of proficiency and to be able to say what we really
want to say, we need to have some grammatical knowledge.

Author
Tanya Cotter
By teaching grammar we not only give our students the means to express themselves, but
we also fulfil their expectations of what learning a foreign language involves. Fortunately,
nowadays with the emphasis on a communicative approach and a wealth of stimulating
resources, teaching grammar does not necessarily mean endless conjugation of verbs or
grammar translation.

 Which approach?
 Presentation, practice and production (PPP) Presentation

o Presentation

o Practice

o Production

 Conclusion

Which approach?

There are two main approaches to teaching grammar. These are the deductive and the
inductive approach.

A deductive approach is when the rule is presented and the language is produced based
on the rule. (The teacher gives the rule.)
 An inductive approach is when the rule is inferred through some form of guided

discovery. (The teacher gives the students a means to discover the rule for
themselves.)
In other words, the former is more teacher centred and the latter more learner centred. Both
approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. In my own experience, the deductive
approach is undoubtedly time saving and allows more time for practising the language items
thus making it an effective approach with lower level students. The inductive approach, on
the other hand, is often more beneficial to students who already have a base in the language
as it encourages them to work things out for themselves based on their existing knowledge.

Presentation, practice and production (PPP)

A deductive approach often fits into a lesson structure known as PPP (Presentation,
Practice, Production). The teacher presents the target language and then gives students the
opportunity to practise it through very controlled activities. The final stage of the lesson gives
the students the opportunity to practise the target language in freer activities which bring in
other language elements.

In a 60-minute lesson each stage would last approximately 20 minutes. This model works
well as it can be used for most isolated grammatical items. It also allows the teacher to time
each stage of the lesson fairly accurately and to anticipate and be prepared for the problems
students may encounter. It is less workable at higher levels when students need to compare
and contrast several grammatical items at the same time and when their linguistic abilities
are far less uniform.

Presentation

In this stage the teacher presents the new language in a meaningful context. I find that
building up stories on the board, using realia or flashcards and miming are fun ways to
present the language.

For example, when presenting the 2nd conditional, I often draw a picture of myself with
thought bubbles of lots of money, a sports car, a big house and a world map.

I ask my students what I'm thinking about and then introduce the target language.
"If I had a lot of money, I would buy a sports car and a big house."
 I practise and drill the sentence orally before writing it on the board (positive, negative,

question and short answer).

 I then focus on form by asking the students questions. E.g."What do we use after 'if'?"

and on meaning by asking the students questions to check that they have understood
the concept (E.g."Do I have lots of money?" No. "What am I doing?" Imagining.)
 When I am satisfied that my students understand the form and the meaning, I move on

to the practice stage of the lesson. During this stage of the lesson it is important to
correct phonological and grammatical mistakes.
Practice

There are numerous activities which can be used for this stage including gap fill exercises,
substitution drills, sentence transformations, split sentences, picture dictations, class
questionnaires, reordering sentences and matching sentences to pictures.

 It is important that the activities are fairly controlled at this stage as students have only
just met the new language. Many students' books and workbooks have exercises and
activities which can be used at this stage.
  When teaching the 2nd conditional, I would use split sentences as a controlled practice
activity. I give students lots of sentence halves and in pairs they try and match the
beginnings and ends of the sentences.
Example: "If I won the lottery," …. "I'd travel around the world."
 I would then do a communicative follow up game like pelmanism or snap using the same

sentence halves.
Production

Again there are numerous activities for this stage and what you choose will depend on the
language you are teaching and on the level of your students. However, information gaps,
role plays, interviews, simulations, find someone who, spot the differences between two
pictures, picture cues, problem solving, personalisation activities and board games are all
meaningful activities which give students the opportunity to practise the language more
freely.

 When teaching the 2nd conditional, I would try to personalise the lesson at this stage by
giving students a list of question prompts to ask others in the class.
Example: do / if / win the lottery?
 Although the questions are controlled the students are given the opportunity to answer

more spontaneously using other language items and thus the activity becomes much
less predictable.
 It is important to monitor and make a note of any errors so that you can build in class

feedback and error analysis at the end of the lesson.

Conclusion

When teaching grammar, there are several factors we need to take into consideration and
the following are some of the questions we should ask ourselves:

 How useful and relevant is the language?

 What other language do my students need to know in order to learn the new structure

effectively?
 What problems might my students face when learning the new language?

 How can I make the lesson fun, meaningful and memorable?

Although I try to only use English when teaching a grammar lesson, it is sometimes
beneficial to the students to make a comparison to L1 in the presentation stage. This is
particularly true in the case of more problematic grammatical structures which students are
not able to transfer to their own language.

It is also important to note that using the PPP model does not necessarily exclude using a
more inductive approach since some form of learner-centred guided discovery could be built
into the presentation stage. When presenting the 2nd conditional I sometimes present the
language in context and then give the students a worksheet with a series of analysis
 questions to do in pairs.

PPP is one model for planning a lesson. Other models include TTT (Test, Teach, Test), ARC
(Authentic use, Restricted use, Clarification and focus) and ESA (Engage, Study, Activate).
All models have their advantages and disadvantages and I, like many other teachers I know,
use different models depending on the lesson, class, level and learner styles.

Further reading

Grammar Practice Activities: A Practical Guide for Teachers. Penny Ur, Cambridge
Handbooks for Language Teachers 1988
Grammar Games and Activities for Teachers. Peter Watcyn Jones, Penguin Books 1995
How to Teach English. Jeremy Harmer, Longman 1998
How to Teach Grammar. Scott Thornbury, Longman 1999

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Comments
Submitted by Wista Suroyya on Sat, 01/07/2023 - 08:44
Permalink

english grammar
may I know when did the author upload this article?
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Submitted by Paul Braddock on Mon, 01/09/2023 - 09:04
In reply to english grammar by Wista Suroyya
Permalink

Re: english grammar

Hi Wista

This article was written in 2005.

Best wishes

Paul
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Submitted by Andreas Stadler on Tue, 06/28/2022 - 17:25
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PPP
 I don't understand the complaining about PPP. It is a standard method in all subjects. It
works well. The variation is PWP , pre while post which might be better but would take more
time to identify patterns. So students would be lost in the woods without any presenting of
rules. It is how you teach PPP. I think I havent done it very lively up to now reading this.
Thank you very much for the advices.
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Submitted by Linguapress on Fri, 11/13/2020 - 19:44
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Teaching grammar
It's good to see someone defending a deductive approach and PPP. They may not be
trendy, as comments above suggest, but for some students they are vital. Grammar teaching
became un-trendy in the 1970s, as the first comment above points out. That was a bad
move, and one that was particularly bad for the many students, specially the many who are
not so good at "discovering things for themselves". In this respect, the deductive / PPP
approach is more egalitarian.
Andrew Rossiter discusses this in an article in the November 2020 issue of EL Gazette -
https://www.elgazette.com/how-to-demystify-grammar/
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Submitted by shahzadashraf2005 on Mon, 04/03/2017 - 04:40
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English teaching method

I have never come eye to eye with such of traditional teaching methodology like deductive or
inductive and so on. When we talk about English Teaching methods. I can't understand why
are we are giving ourselves so many headaches going through such old research. Why can
we not make this method smooth and natural? This talk can be achieved by simple rule of
nature. How we can expect a person to swim just by telling him rules of swimming? The laws
of nature are very simple. "Just let him do the thing". How did we learn to walk, talk and eat?

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Submitted by Kathy247 on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 16:33
In reply to English teaching method by shahzadashraf2005
Permalink

english teaching method

That sounds great!! how would you suggest teaching specific grammar structures
naturally? :)

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Submitted by Andreas Stadler on Tue, 06/28/2022 - 17:29
In reply to English teaching method by shahzadashraf2005
Permalink

PPP
 We learn from imitation but the English teacher in the class is the only role model if you are
in Germany e.g.
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Submitted by kate wong on Thu, 06/03/2010 - 02:22
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PPP
PPP is now an 'old' method, its principles lying in bahaviourism. That is not to say it should
be discarded entirely, as language teachers across the generations have used it sometimes
successfully, and sometimes resentfully, given the rules of delivery and lesson planning it
once implied.

What I thnk is important in the article, is the comment that this approach does not need to be
teacher centred or deductive. In fact, this is what save PPP from sudden death! As the writer
suggests, a better use of the approach is to elicit the language from students by using a
context, then check concept, and proceed with communicative practice and
personalisation rather than the once required battery of drills. This can be followed up by
communicative tasks which are learner centred.

I am surprised that out of all the other approaches available, this is the one chosen to
examine in detail. We were using it in the 1970's before the t/functional approach hit the
language teaching community. All the other approaches mentioned n the article arose as
alternatives to and reactios against PPP.

What about someone writing about different approaches?

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Submitted by nirosha sen on Thu, 10/28/2010 - 00:58
In reply to PPP by kate wong
Permalink

PPP
Well I like it! It's nice to know in this era of the communicative where meaning takes centre
stage, the old fashioned deductive approach still holds as bonafide method to elicit so many
different samples derived from a single form. Definitely faster and more concentrated if one
needs to be thorough.
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