CONDITIONALS STRUCTURES:
CONDITIONAL 1
CONDITIONAL 2
INES MORENO VARAS
CREATURES
USING THEN NEXT
STRUCTURES TO DESCRIBE
YOUR STRANGE ANIMAL:
If I were this creature, I would live...
I would eat...
I would ... (do what?)
I wouldn’t (do what?)
My colours would be...
CONDITIONALS ARE USED TO:
There are a number of structures in English that are called
the conditionals ,
which are used to talk about possible or imaginary
situations.
A "Condition" is a "situation or circumstance".
For example:
If a certain condition is true, then a particular result
happens.
There are four basic conditionals that we use in English.
CONDITIONAL 2
We use Type 2 to express unreal
CONDITIONAL 1
or hypothetical conditions in the
It's used to talk about things present or future.
which might happen in the
future. Form:
Form: If + Verb (past tense), modal
if + Simple Present, verb + infinitive
will-Future
If + Verb (past tense), would
Example:
Examples:
If I find her address, I’ll send
her an invitation. If you went to office tomorrow, you
could tell him.
If i had the time , i would go to the
show.
It's used to talk about things which might happen in the future. Of course, we
can't know what will happen in the future, but this describes possible things,
which could easily come true.
CONDITIONAL TYPE 2
EXAMPLES
1st
2 nd
WORK IN GROUPS: JOIN THE SENTENCES
ACORDING THE CONDITIONAL FORM
Conditional Forms Tic-Tac-Toe
THANK YOU.
I would ... (do what?)
I wouldn’t (do what?)
My colours would be...
•Ask students to think of a secret creature. It should be unusual: crow, octopus,
•grasshopper, worm, hyena. No cats or dogs - they're too easy, and not secret enough.
•Students then describe what they would do if they were that creature, following the pattern
• on the board if need be.
•They continue to describe the creature until the rest of the class is able to guess what it is
Tip
Demonstrate the activity yourself first.
Tip
This can be done in IN THE PAST too. Just change the pattern:
If, in a previous life, I had been this creature,
I would have ...
lived...
eaten... etc.
Extra resourcesUnusual animals:
www.factmonster.com/spot/unusualanimals1.html
Animal facts courtesy of Phoenix zoo: www.phoenixzoo.org/zoo/animals/facts/index.asp
More facts with video, audio and more from National Geographic for kids:
www.nationalgeographic.com/kids/creature_feature/archive/
Game: "If my friend were..." This is an all-time favorite, usually associated with practice of conditional
clauses. Though this was not my aim, I chose this game to focus on the students´ feelings and emotions
about their best friends. So, we had a round of questions such as "If your friend were a/n (book, animal,
color, etc.), what ...would he /she be?" The very last question was "If your friend were a song,..." and this
was answered by almost all the group members.
I took advantage of the game as a transition to introduce two songs I had selected. So, I announced we
were going to work with two songs.
The first task was to match a list of objects with the adjectives students associated with them. I wrote on
the board the lists below:
After this was shared, we listened to the first song, "Old Friends", by Simon and Garfunkel, and discussed
the tone of the song, the view of friendship expressed in it and how the song made students feel.
After this, we did the same with the Beatles´ "When I´m sixty-four". The answers and feelings were
completely different, since this song conveys a more positive view of being "old friends". When consulted
about which song students would rather sing, they all chose the second one.
