A substitution table is used while teaching structures of English to students. H.E. Palmer defines a substitution table as "a process by which any model sentence may be multiplied indefinitely by substituting for any of its words or word-groups, including others of the same grammatical family and within certain semantic limits".
Language components to be taught must be used in a grammatically correct model sentence. Simple structures or language components must be the ones taught in initial stages, with only one item covered at a time. A word, phrase, idiom, or vocabulary item may be used as a tool. The words of a model sentence are substituted for by other words. The substitution words are of the same grammatical family in which the model sentence is drawn. The components (structure/words) must be simple so that the pupil can easily understand them.
