How to Teach English Grammar Using a P-P-P Lesson Plan

While learning and understanding vocabulary is a vital part of language learning, all of these words lack any real sense of meaning without grammar. Therefore, grammar is an essential part of teaching English and planning an effective grammar lesson is a necessary skill. This OnTESOL graduate article will show you how to create a TESOL lesson plan for a grammar class using the P-P-P framework.

The Simple TESOL Lesson Plan: P-P-P Format

The PPP lesson planning framework is the most basic and easiest approach to teach grammar. Once you master PPP, you will be able to follow ESA and TBL without any issues.

In PPP, the teacher presents the target grammar structure. Learners are then given the opportunity to practice the structure in a controlled manner. Finally, learners produce new grammar in a freer and more meaningful way that also incorporates other elements of language.

In a typical one hour lesson, each of these three stages would last for about 20 minutes.

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1. Presentation

In this first stage, you need a meaningful context in which to show how this grammar is used. You can do this in many different ways. For example, you can draw pictures on the board with speech bubbles explaining what is happening, or you can use a short video clip to supplement the material in the textbook.

You can also even mime a short scene if you feel confident in your acting ability! Here’s an example of how you might present the second conditional:

• On the board draw a stick man with thought bubbles coming out of his head. In these bubbles stick pictures of money, a sports car, a yacht, and a big house.
• Introduce the grammar structure with an example sentence: ‘If I won the lottery, I would buy a big house and a sports car.’
• Ask concept questions that focus on the form of the grammar: ‘What verb form comes after ‘if’?’
• Also ask questions that focus on the meaning of the grammar: ‘Do I have a lot of money now?’
• Drill the class with the examples until you’re satisfied that they can do it reasonably well.

2. Practice

There are many ways that you can get learners to practice in a controlled manner; these include gap-fill exercises, substitution drills, sentence transformations, reordering sentences, or matching a picture to a sentence, for instance.

• ‘If I ____ (to win) the lottery, I ____ (to buy) a big house and a sports car.’
• ‘a big house / If I won /, I would buy / and a sports car / the lottery.’

At this stage, it’s quite important that the activity is controlled so that the focus is almost entirely on the new grammar structure. A good way to do this is to put learners in groups or pairs to work on the activity while you monitor and give feedback.

After this, do a similar activity on the board so that all of the class is involved. You could make this into a game or a speaking activity, i.e. make it more communicative but still very controlled.

3. Production

In the final stage of the PPP lesson, you should give learners the chance to use the new grammar in a meaningful yet freer way. Good activities for facilitating this include role-plays, picture cues, ‘find someone who…’, information gaps, and interviews.

If using an interview activity, you might get learners to ask three people what they would do if they won the lottery, for instance. It’s important at this stage to monitor and note down any errors that occur, so you can build this into your class feedback and error analysis, which is a great way to round off such grammar lessons.

When we teach grammar, we give our learners the ability to express themselves accurately, while also fulfilling their expectations of what it means to learn another language. The PPP framework will help you deliver grammar ESL lessons effectively.

OnTESOL – Internationally Recognized TESOL Courses Since 2003

What’s the difference between OnTESOL and other online TEFL courses? The online TEFL/ TESOL certification courses offered by OnTESOL include advanced lab assignments and live workshops to teach you to create lesson plans using the major ESL lesson planning frameworks, including PPP for grammar lessons.