Teaching the Conditional

Hi! This is my first post on this site, but I recently found it and fell in love. Such a great resource!!

Anyway, I am teaching a culturally diverse, intermediate-level class the second conditional and can't think of a very good assessment.

I am beginning the class with a brief brainstorming session talking about ways that cultural diversity and ways that cultures can connect, just to warm things up. Then I am planning on showing the Where the Hell is Matt? youtube video to show students the power that connections can have. Then we will discuss the video, by talking about the differences between the cultures in the video and how the people connected despite their cultural differences.

Then the students will write about themselves personally and about themselves as a part of their greater culture, with the next step being speaking to a partner and exchanging ideas about their different cultures.

Here's where the lesson gets muddy. I wanted them to speak with their partners to come up with theoretical situations in which they visit the other's culture. Like, coming from a German student, If I went to France, I would drink wine instead of beer.

The lesson seems to break down here, however, and I was wondering if anyone had any ideas for authentic texts or worksheet ideas that could maybe help teach the students the conditional before the formal grammar lesson.

Does this make sense? Does anyone have any ideas?

For teaching second conditional, you could be creative by using roleplay. For example, if you have a German student and a French student, have the French student act as a waiter and the German student as a customer. The waiter makes a suggestion and in response the customer makes an observation about how it would be different in his country.You might have such an exchange

Waiter: May I recommend the French onion soup. It is very popular in the north west region

Customer: If we were in Germany/ this was a German restaurant, you would probably suggest a salad

This would be a good exercise to use with the expected learning outcomes being:

practice of the second conditional in a creative setting

the learning of habits of other cultures.

(+ as an expected additional outcome)- the practice of functional language

Good luck,

Daniel Stavisky, Manchester

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Originally Posted by revelos

Hi! This is my first post on this site, but I recently found it and fell in love. Such a great resource!!

Anyway, I am teaching a culturally diverse, intermediate-level class the second conditional and can't think of a very good assessment.

I am beginning the class with a brief brainstorming session talking about ways that cultural diversity and ways that cultures can connect, just to warm things up. Then I am planning on showing the Where the Hell is Matt? youtube video to show students the power that connections can have. Then we will discuss the video, by talking about the differences between the cultures in the video and how the people connected despite their cultural differences.

Then the students will write about themselves personally and about themselves as a part of their greater culture, with the next step being speaking to a partner and exchanging ideas about their different cultures.

Here's where the lesson gets muddy. I wanted them to speak with their partners to come up with theoretical situations in which they visit the other's culture. Like, coming from a German student, If I went to France, I would drink wine instead of beer.

The lesson seems to break down here, however, and I was wondering if anyone had any ideas for authentic texts or worksheet ideas that could maybe help teach the students the conditional before the formal grammar lesson.

Does this make sense? Does anyone have any ideas?

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Welcome to UsingEnglish revelos!
Your idea is indeed interesting, as well as danielstavisky's suggestions.
Go for it and don't forget to share the results with us here.