Practice and production is the last part of the PPP lesson. This is where students get to practice the new words and phrases they have learned in the lesson and produce them in new contexts.
In order to help students to practice using their new vocabulary, teachers need to come up with ideas for activities during which students get the opportunity to use their new words alongside their existing knowledge.
Some activities to help students practice new vocabulary could include:
- Devising written role-plays
- Creating spoken role-plays
- Writing letters and emails
- Writing postcards
- Writing diary entries
- Taking part in question and answer sessions with a partner
- Playing games, such as bingo, crosswords, word searches or scrabble
- Matching pictures with words
- Asking questions in a group
- Holding quizzes
- Creating stories
Using Games in the classroom
Practice is a vital part of learning new elements of a language. Teachers need to have enjoyable EFL games and activities ready to help students practise their newly acquired language.
Learning through playing games can help to consolidate a student’s knowledge.
Games keep the memory stimulated in a fun way and the words become embedded in the students’ mind much more easily than if words are listed and simply repeated by drilling.
Techniques for practicing new vocabulary in games:
- Memory games
- Crosswords.
- Affixation: Using prefixes and suffixes to make new words
- Matching pictures to words
- Giving antonyms
- Anagrams
- Word searches
- Hangman
- Shopping lists
- Creating a class story with each student adding a new sentence
Other activities for more organised practice:
- Obeying instructions, e.g. drawing shapes and pictures
- Ticking off items or words they hear
- Answering true/false questions or statements
- Detecting mistakes
- Filling in the gaps in a pre-prepared text
- Guessing definitions
- Filling in a timetable or chart
- Answering comprehension questions
- Summarising – reducing the information to the important points
- Re-writing information in their own words
Encouraging students to produce new vocabulary
During the practice and production stage within a PPP lesson, students need to produce their new vocabulary so teachers can ensure they can use it properly.
The production stage of the lesson allows for the proper assessment of student development, where the teacher can discover just how much the students have learned. Ideas for activities for the production stage of an EFL lesson:
- Dialogues, dramas and role plays, for example, students play the parts of a hotel receptionist and a guest, acting out a problem.
- Giving map directions – students have to give and follow directions on a map to see where they end up.
- Question and answer – in groups/pairs, students write comprehension questions for the other students to answer
- Surveys and questionnaires – students prepare questions on various topics and then conduct surveys by interviewing each other.
- Discussions and debates, centred around a set topic or interest of the group.
- Continue the story: the class have to finish a story the teacher begins, either written or spoken.
- Summarising a story
- Correct mistakes in the text
- Write an article, letter or diary entry
- Crosswords.
- Affixation: Using prefixes and suffixes to make new words.
- Gap fill exercises: Selecting appropriate words to insert in sentences.
- Matching the beginnings and the ends of words together.
- Matching pictures to words.
- Using antonyms.
Other activities for production (for writing exercises in particular):
Exercises for EFL writing practice include:
- Descriptions (home, family members, friends, jobs, a favourite place)
- Short biography of self, family member or famous person
- Letters to a pen-friend
- Diary or journal entry
- Letters requesting information, giving information or giving thanks
- Magazine problem pages
Explore more about presenting new vocabulary.
Share your thoughts on practice and production
Can you think of more ways for students to practice and produce their new vocabulary in an EFL lesson?
Which methods of practice and production are best for writing, speaking, listening and reading new vocabulary?
Which methods of practice and production do your students enjoy the most?
Share your ideas and experiences in the comments box below.