English Teaching Methodology
How to Teach English as a Foreign Language
I can’t possibly teach you everything about teaching English as a foreign language in one post, so the goal here is just to introduce you to some of the basic ideas about the methods commonly used in the EFL classroom and I will give you links for several good resources.
One of the best resources around for good solid basics is: Basic Teacher Training for EFL Teachers. Some of the material here on TEFL Teacher Training is drawn and expanded upon from TEFL Boot Camp
There are two most commonly followed methods taught by TEFL Certification schools. They are PPP and ESA. Advocates of each often think that the method they know is the holy grail – but they are both quite similar (though some authors think not!).
If you take a relatively flexible approach to how you teach, as that is what your students really need, you will see there are benefits of both methods and you can use a bit of both in every lesson.
These methods and my explanations here are primarily for teaching speaking skills, though the methods can be adapted to teaching reading, writing and listening skills as well. But we will address how to teach those skills individually in future posts.
We will start with PPP.
“PPP” – means Presentation, Practice, and Production
“Presentation” is where the target language, the language to be taught to the students, is “presented” to the students.
This is generally done through eliciting language from and cueing the students to see if they know it or how much of it they might know (often someone in the class knows some or all of it). The teacher provides the language if no one knows it. Usually a good portion of the target language can be obtained from the students.
The purpose of the elicitation and cueing is to get the students involved in the class and to increase the relevancy of the lesson – which in turn increases student motivation (the topic for another post).
The target language is usually put on the marker board either in structure, grammar-type, charts or in dialogs. The presentation stage of a lesson features more “teacher talk” than the other stages of the lesson – generally as much as 65-90% of the time. The presentation portion of the lesson may take as much as 20-40% of the total lesson time.
Less teacher talk in any part of the lesson, is better. Our goal is to have the students talk, not the teacher. You already have plenty of practice speaking and they don’t. So don’t hog the lesson – it is the classic symptom of a poor language teacher.
Next comes “Practice” stage of the lesson where the students practice the target language in one to three activities that progress from very structured, where students are given activities that provide little possibility for error, to less-structured as they master the material.
These activities should include as much “student talk” as possible and not focus on written activities, although written activities can sometimes provide a structure for the verbal practices.
Practice activities should have the “student talk time” range from 60-80 percent of the time – with teacher talk time being as little as possible. This portion of the total lesson can take from 30-50% of the total lesson time.
“Production” is the stage of the lesson where the students take the target language and use it in conversations that they create and structure (ideally) and use it to talk about themselves or their daily lives or situations.
The production stage of the lesson should involve “student talk” as much as 90% of the time – and this component of the lesson can/should take as much as 20-30% of the total lesson time.
As you can see, the general structure of a PPP lesson is flexible. An important feature is the movement from controlled and structured speech to less-controlled and more freely used and created speech.
Another important feature of PPP, and other methods, is the rapid reduction of teacher talk time and the increase in student talk time as you move through the lesson.
As mentioned earlier, one of the most common errors untrained teachers make is that they talk too much. EFL students get very little chance to actually use the language they learn and the EFL classroom must be structured to create that opportunity.
“ESA” – means Engage, Study, and Activate
The stages of ESA are roughly equivalent to PPP, though ESA is slightly different in that it is designed to and allows movement back and forth between the stages. However, each stage is similar to the PPP stages in the same order.
Proponents of the ESA method stress its flexibility compared to PPP. The ESA method as defined by Jeremy Harmer, its primary advocate, uses more elicitation and stresses more “Engagement” of students in the early stages of the lesson.
Both elicitation (drawing out the language from the students by use of questions, prompts and cueing) and Engagement are important in raising student motivation, but both tactics can just as easily, and should, be used in the Presentation stage of PPP.
ESA is superior method to PPP when both are looked at from a rigid point of view.
But, EFL is not rigid and you should not adhere to any one viewpoint or method. PPP is often an easier method for teacher-trainees to get a handle on.
TED’s Tips™ #1: Study and learn one method well – branch out to other methods as you increase your experience and skill level.
TED’s Tips™ #2: Don’t get hung up on terminology or too married to any one method. There are many ways to approach language instruction and PPP and ESA are used primarily as they are easy to teach in the relatively short four-week TEFL Certification or CELTA courses.
PS: I have developed the GRO method – just like but different from PPP and ESA – for helping my students improve. The GRO Method is more student focused, even in its description. “G” is for Growing student knowledge by Getting new information and Grasping the function of the target language of the lesson. “R” is the portion of the lesson for student Reaction to and Rehearsal or practice with the target language. And the “O” is for the students to Optimize their use of the language by making it more personal and relevant.
I know my method is effective and no other method is nearly as flexible. So there! Please allow my “tongue in cheek” approach.
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Tags: English Teaching Methods, How to Teach English, Teaching English, TEFL Methodology, TEFL Training
Uncategorized | Ted | 
August 20, 2009 9:09 pm
7 Comments
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By Adam, August 24, 2009 @ 10:55 pm
I like your GRO method. He who writes it first owns it! Good idea. Solid review of basic methodology. Thx!
AC
By Romulo Guedez Fernandez, September 14, 2009 @ 10:12 pm
I teach Spanish as a foreign language.
I find both methods are very much interesting. I encourage them to talk as much as possible, to be creative. I teach advanced level, so presentations some times are not the best because they create a lot of stress; they prefer to talk about things we read or listen to. When I teach students I encourage students to be daring and express their opinion not worrying much about how their utterances come out, I tell them that that is my task: to provide a possible way to express such (complex) opinion using simple and complex structures.
I realise that it is not an easy task. I agree with you, it is important to motivate students so that they can move forward. I think that encouraging them on this daring attitude can help them tremendously.
By Ted, September 14, 2009 @ 10:17 pm
Excellent comments, Romulo!
You are quite right, students need their classroom to be a place where they can make all the mistakes in the world. It is our job as teachers to help them organize it into useful and understandable speech.
Thank you for your comments.
Ted
By Bufaracha Hecham, November 12, 2009 @ 4:11 am
I see no difference between the three methodologies.The PPP,ESA and GRO approaches involve deceiphering the meaning,understanding it and personlizing it.Above all, they are very fruitful in terms of teaching English as second language.Sometimes as a teacher of English language for foreign students whose mother tongue is Arabic,It becomes very problematic to implement these methodologies;students no longer have the ability to create and personalize their own language even if they know the context discussed in classroom;hence,we are unable to attain the gest of English learning process.I wonder if there might be any possibility that facilitates the production process that is to say the last stage? thanks
By Romulo Guedez Fernandez, November 23, 2009 @ 10:47 am
After reading Bufaracha’s comments I would like to make a comment that this question provokes, it is very much what I ask to myself when reflecting about students’ performance.. What can I do to improve, promote, develop and facilitate our students’ production? How to improve their communication skills?
I think one of the possible answers to it is to try to teach the language we teach using a more communicative approach, utilising authentic materials, in the classroom implementing more social (collaborative) activities and very much important, to have student become reflective students (that they reflect on their learning process, make some resolution and put them into practice). We as teacher should do it as well. ‘Learning that does not daily increase will daily decrease’ this is a Chinese proverb. Our personal teaching philosophy and teaching style are important and students notice it.
Student have at their reach a lot of resources but we as facilitators should guide them and allow them to learn to learn and to learn a language, and to use such resources conveniently.
For example, motivate, enthuse your students in taking charge of their learning process, no-one will do it for them. The way we as teacher transmit or pass on to them such true is very much personal. No methods can be used for it.
Cognitive factors are very important, but I think we have to take into account many other factors/parameter like: student’s personal learning styles, emotional traits, cultural and social context. So these are important as well are. Knowing well these parameters we will be in a better position to deliver a quality teaching service. And that is very much rewarding.
Thanks.
By ppdurdymuradov, January 29, 2010 @ 2:14 pm
need literature in English teaching methods
By Ted, January 29, 2010 @ 5:13 pm
Look in the Archives on the right side of the page – particularly start here:
http://www.teflteachertraining
.com/blog/2009/08/ and off you go!
Good luck!
Ted