Jane Willis joins us to discuss the drawbacks of PPP and the benefits and challenges of using task cycles for language lessons.
Hi everyone, welcome back to the TEFL Training Institute podcast. I'm Ross Thorburn. This week we're talking about tasks and task cycles and comparing those to PPP, present, practice, produce, which really I think is still the most common way that teachers out there, probably including you if you're listening, stage your lessons.
Our guest this week is Jane Willis. Jane's an award-winning writer, speaker and consultant on English language teaching. She's worked all over the world as an English teacher and a trainer, but Jane I think is most famous for her writings about task-based learning.
Some of her books include Task-Based Instruction in Foreign Language Education, Practices and Programs, A Framework for Task-Based Learning, English for Primary Teachers and Teachers Exploring Tasks in English Language Teaching. So in this week's episode I asked Jane about some of the problems with PPP, the advantages of using a task-based cycle instead of using PPP, and some of the challenges of using a task cycle. Before the interview, a quick reminder, if you'd like to support the podcast you can now buy us a coffee.
There's a link in the show notes. Many thanks to those of you that have already done that. And now on with the interview.
Enjoy! Hi Jane, thanks very much for joining us. To begin with, PPP, present, practice, produce, is still very much I think the most common and the dominant staging model in language teaching. What are some of the problems with PPP? Yeah, well, there are quite a few problems.
First of all, for the ordinary learner, for an average learner, they can do five years English at school and then after school they come out and they can't speak English. They're really unable to use their English to communicate. So that's the first big problem, it doesn't work.
The second problem is that if you think about how people learn languages and the research and the second language acquisition, it shows that you really do need to be able to use English communicatively in order to learn it and to have a lot of exposure to it, to spoken English as well as written English. And when you think about a PPP lesson, if they're teaching a grammar or a structure, it's very narrow, the input, they get very little exposure and it doesn't reflect normal conversation. So the teacher is trying to control their language right down to something fairly minimal and the only exposure they get really are from the listening activities and the reading activities in their textbooks, because they do improve over five years or so at school, but the emphasis somehow is on getting the grammar right and it makes learners very anxious and that's the other problem, is that it breeds a kind of feeling of, if I make a mistake it's going to be wrong.
So it breeds fear rather than the feeling of confidence. So the teacher introduces it and it's all one grammatical item with a mix of vocabulary, then they practice it, fine, that's lovely, the teacher's in control, the kids can all do it, they can all repeat and so on. And then they're asked to produce it and then they're in groups and two things can happen, either they produce a lot of sentences from the practice activity, they're not focusing on meaning at all, they're not meaning what they say, they're not expressing what they want to express, they're just thinking what does the teacher want me to say, aha, I will use will in every sentence for the future, and they look at their going to exercise and they change it to will and they're not meaning, there's no distinction in meaning, or they think, ah good, we're free, and they do the whole production activity without using the new structure at all.
So that shows why don't we start with the free bit, why don't we start with a free activity and then home it down to other structures and other lexical items that come into a normal, free interaction. Okay, so what is the alternative then to PPP? You mentioned they are putting the freer practice at the beginning of a lesson, tell us about doing that in a task cycle. So really it's a three-staged cycle, it's task, and obviously the teacher will help them prepare for the task and maybe even set the task the lesson before so they know what they're going to be talking about.
So you need to help them prepare the vocabulary, help them think about things they'll need, language they need, and they need to do that too. But the main task cycle is task planning report, but the planning stage is when the learning happens. They're still working with their own meanings, they know what they want to say, and they're trying to express those meanings in appropriate, accurate, interesting sentences.
And basically they're showing off their language, they're showing that they can do this. So the teacher would go around then and help the pairs work out what they're going to say, maybe rehearse some of the pronunciation or maybe correct some of their mistakes so that it gets across their meanings. They're working with their own meanings, gets across their own meanings more precisely, and the report back is when they either share their writing or they talk in public.
When they're actually talking to the class, it won't be perfect, but it will be their best efforts and they'll feel afterwards, when I've done this with students for the first time, they say, oh gosh, it's so good, we were so frightened of doing it, but we've done it and we've told the whole class, we've presented it to the class, and they feel really good about it. And it gives them a real sense of satisfaction to find that they can communicate, not just chatting in private, but also showing that they can do this in a more public situation. So task planning report is the main task cycle, and a lot of language improvement and learning goes on at the planning stage.
So I think it's really common for teachers to sort of shy away from putting a task or something more challenging, as they see it, at the beginning of a lesson because they think, well, my students won't be able to do this activity if I don't teach them the language first. So what would you say to teachers who are listening and thinking that? Well, if someone says that to me, I would ask them, well, have they not learnt any language from the lessons you've already taught them? Why do you need to teach them the language first? How do you know what language they're going to need? I think that's the crux of that matter, isn't it? How do you know what language they will need if they're expressing, if they're communicating their own meanings and their own opinions, their own experiences? Now, I remember a little boy in a class in Germany they'd done going to a few weeks back, and they were doing Will this lesson, and they would put in production groups to produce what are their plans for this weekend. And one little boy looked very worried and said, I don't know, I might Will visit my grandmother.
I might Will. Because he didn't, he had no fixed plans. So you don't know what they're going to need to say.
Okay, so tell us a bit more about some of the advantages then, Jane, of staging a lesson in this way of putting a task or a free practice activity, so to speak, at the beginning of a lesson. And how is it different to really just putting the final stage of a PPP lesson at the beginning? Oh, it's very different. Yes, because they're not all the time thinking, what have we just learned? We've got to use this structure.
They're thinking, oh, that's interesting. I can talk about my last visit to my grandparents, or depending on what age they are, I can talk about my grandparents. I've got to think of three interesting things to say about my grandparents, or one memory I have of visiting my grandparents, something that happened when I went to see my grandparents.
And they can, if they know the lesson before they're going to do that, they'll be thinking about how to say it in English. And then you can record students doing this task, record learners, you can record other people doing it. And so you've got a whole body of language that you can then look at.
Maybe your grammar focus in your textbook was past tense. So, fine, let's look at all the past tenses that come up in those stories. They can write their stories.
You can look at the language afterwards. It means that they're actually wanting to say something. They're motivated to say something.
They're engaged in the task. It's not just a bit more practice. So I think there, Jane, you covered the planning and the reporting.
Can you tell us a bit more about tasks themselves? What is a task and what makes a task a task? OK. Well, a task is an activity where meaning is primary. So learners are really wanting to communicate in English.
They really need to get something across. They really need to get their meaning across. And to do that, they need quite a lot of words and phrases.
And if they make mistakes, it doesn't really matter as long as they get their meaning across somehow in order to achieve a goal. For a successful task, you need to set a goal that is clear and help learners to achieve that goal. And there should be some kind of outcome.
So either they know they're going to make a poster for something, or they're going to report to the rest of the class what they've achieved in their task, or they're going to draft a letter to the director of the school to ask for improvements in some area. So it could be making a list of things you need to do before you go on holiday, or a list of preparations for Christmas. And they're asked to say, think of five things you need to do before Christmas.
Then if they've got their list, then that's something that they've achieved. And then they can read their list to other people, and they can add things to it, and they can prioritise. Sometimes you can ask them to put something really silly on their list, and they have a good laugh about it.
There's all kinds of ways you can make it enjoyable. So they need to have a goal, and they need to have something they've done that they can share at the end of it. The important thing about task-based learning is that they're really meaning what they say.
So they're talking, maybe in twos or threes, about something, communicating together for the task. And then if you ask them to tell the rest of the class about the task, they're going to think, oh, I need to be on my good linguistic behaviour. I don't want to make mistakes.
So I just need a bit of time for planning. So after the task, which is done in the privacy of pairs or threes or fours, it doesn't matter if they make mistakes. They're just getting their meaning across and drafting something.
Exploratory talk, it's private. And then you ask them to summarise what they've done, to tell the class about their results, or to write their results down so that they can put it up on the wall for other people to read. So it's become public.
And if you're going to use language publicly, you actually do prepare it quite carefully. If you're going to give a speech or if you're going on to a job interview, you do think quite hard about how you're going to say things. So it puts them in a different position.
So they really want to be accurate. And they really feel the need to speak well, to use interesting words and to get their meaning across more precisely. I think another barrier to tasks and task-based learning and task cycles being more widely used in language teaching is in teacher training.
I often hear teacher trainers say, yeah, I think task-based learning is great. But to be honest, that's more for teachers with experience. PPP is much more appropriate for teachers who are starting out.
Obviously, putting tasks, as you suggested earlier, at the beginning of a lesson cycle means teachers need to be much more responsive to their students. Does that require a higher level of skill from teachers? Or do you feel this is something that teachers with very little experience should still be able to do? Well, as a methodology, it's much more natural. Because talking about, oh, what do we need to do before Christmas? Oh, gosh.
There's a whole load of things. And anyone can talk about that. And the teacher's English is always going to be better than the pupil's English.
And they're working in pairs. And the teacher is going round just helping them, supporting them. Doesn't need that much more than a basic knowledge of English to do that, usually.
But I think one thing the teacher does certainly need to have confidence in using whatever English they've got. Learners are not going to notice their mistakes. They'll be thinking about what their teacher means all the time.
They're not going to remember the forms that the teachers used. So, I don't think teachers need to be worried about making mistakes in front of their class. But they do need to be confident users of language.
And I've seen teachers gain confidence by just starting task-based learning. One more time, everyone. That was Jane Willis.
For more from Jane, check out her website, willis-elt.co.uk. There's a link to that in the show notes. There's also a link to our website, www.teflTrainingInstitute.com. There's also a link where you can buy us a coffee if you'd like to support the podcast. Also, check out and subscribe to our YouTube channel.