Page 279 - 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
when I get home
she’ll be ready
if I remind her
will Janet help me
if I do what I promised
Bob isn’t going to argue
Figure 17-2:
First conditional dominoes.
if you don’t work harder
if I buy him a drink
it will be cheaper
when the new supermarket opens
there will be queues
Imagining the second conditional
The second conditional is a structure you use to express something that’s hypothetical, imaginary or unlikely. You usually teach this at intermediate level.
The second conditional confuses students at first because it uses the past simple tense but doesn’t actually refer to the past at all. The basic structure is: ‘If’ plus a verb in the past simple then the subject plus ‘would’ plus the infinitive form of the verb:
If you won the national lottery, what would you buy first? If I were you, I’d stay away from him.
If you found £100 in the street, I’m sure that you would give it to the police.
You can use ‘were’ for all the subject pronouns too. It sounds more formal than when you use ‘was’ in the normal way:
If I were here, it would be better.
If we were here, it would be better.
Remember that ‘if/when’ must never be in the same clause as ‘would’, so you can’t say, ‘If I’d be rich, I’d live in Miami’.
The structure of the second conditional is difficult to remember at first so you need to find interesting ways to fix it in your students’ minds. Here are a few suggestions:
✓ Use a song. I have come up with several:
• ‘If I Ruled the World’ written by Ornadel and Bricusse and recorded
by Tony Bennett
• ‘If I Were a Boy’ written by Carlson, Gad and Beyonce Knowles, who recorded it.