by Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany
In a talk delivered at the 44th IATEFL Conference in Harrogate earlier this year, Jim Scivener argued that the term ’situational presentation’ (used by him to refer to the first of three steps in traditional lesson design, known as PPP – presentation, practice and production) seems to have lost much of its meaning and/or relevance in the age of task-based or task-supported, technology enhanced and self-directed instruction: “I’m puzzled that this term, situational presentation, and in fact that the concept behind it, seems to be relatively unknown now. There is a whole generation of teachers that don’t know what this is and don’t know how to do it. Or may be they know it or they know it by a different name or they know it with some other differences …”.
I very much like how he goes on illustrating what situational presentation (or dialogical contextualization) is about. Watch this:
However, based on my personal experience as an EFL teacher educator over here in Gernany, I cannot confirm that situational presentation is something my students/student-teachers in the weekly teaching practice sessions don’t know (or think of as a discredited technique). It is rather a firmly established part of their developing teaching repertoire and, furthermore, a concept that is deeply rooted in their personal set of presumptions and beliefs of how English should be taught in schools. As such, it is a valuable starting point for discussion.
