Page 277 - Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies 2009

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Part IV: The Grammar You Need to Know – and How to Teach It
1) If I meet elderly people
a) it wants to go out
2) When Mark sees Elizabeth
b) I show respect
3) If life is boring
c) he smiles
4) If the dog starts looking at the door
d) people take a trip
Figure 17-1:
Matching exercise for the zero conditional.
So the structure is: If plus present simple tense and a present simple verb in the other clause.
Formulating it for students
You teach the zero conditional at about pre-intermediate level. Generally, stu- dents have no difficulty understanding this structure but you break it down into a formula to prepare students for the other conditionals to come.
Try teaching conditionals with a chain story or dialogue. By that I mean that you build up the interaction clause by clause. For example:
Teacher: What do you do when you feel ill?
Student A: When I feel ill, I stay home instead of going to work.
Teacher: When you stay home, do you take medicine?
Student B: Yes, when I stay home, I take aspirin.
Teacher: Ask Alex about aspirin.
Student B: Do you feel better, when you take aspirin?
Student C: Yes, whenever I take aspirin, I feel better. En Feng, what do you do when you feel a bit better?
Matching exercises are a useful form of practice for conditional sentences. So, you can divide the clauses and mix them up in two columns, like the one in Figure 17-1.
Match one half of the sentence 1) 2) 3) or 4) with the second half in a) b) c) or d). Write the sentences below.
Depending on the possible:
The first conditional
You use the first conditional for a situation that’s quite possible and realistic but still dependent on something else.