How It Works
The key to an effective PACE lesson is a good story. That's right, a story. We all love being told stories, and stories are oftentimes predictable. Since we all have tons of experience with stories, they are naturally a great way to capture the attention of language learners. It is also a great way to teach grammar.
Imagine that you want to teach the passé composé to a group of beginning French students. You could start by explaining terms such as auxiliary verb and past participle and detailing the "rules" for conjugating verbs. Then you could have them practice by conjugating a list of verbs into the passé composé. This is an example of an explicit approach to grammar instruction. To be honest, we have all used this at one point or another in our teaching experiences-- and we all know that it doesn't work. Instead, we need to use a more implicit approach to teaching grammar. That is, an approach where students don't focus specifically on grammar "rules" and verb conjugations, but instead, first focus on meaning and later on the "rules". Additionally, we need to allow our students to figure out some of the grammar rules on their own instead of always giving them the rules and expecting they will remember them. All of this can be done with the PACE Model.
Let's go through each of the four steps of the PACE Model now and discuss what exactly each step does, and how it contributes to learning. Then, we will look at a Sample Lesson to give you an idea of how it works in real life. Since the model is linear, we must go through all four of the steps in order.