davidheath23
New member
- Joined
- Jan 21, 2010
- Member Type
- English Teacher
Hi all.
So I'm an English teacher in Italy...I was teaching last night, and when reviewing conditionals with an upper intermediate class, this happened:
As an example for the zero conditional, I used the sentence:
"If the world explodes, we die." However, a student brought up that, because it is actually impossible to test this situation, it would be correct to use the 1st Conditional instead, "If the world explodes, we will die."
In my opinion, the zero conditional is correct here. Although we cannot directly, scientifically prove that the world exploding would indeed cause or deaths, based on other conditions that lead to our death (IE: exploding), that this theoretical scientific proof is sufficient enough to warrant using the zero conditional.
Thoughts?
So I'm an English teacher in Italy...I was teaching last night, and when reviewing conditionals with an upper intermediate class, this happened:
As an example for the zero conditional, I used the sentence:
"If the world explodes, we die." However, a student brought up that, because it is actually impossible to test this situation, it would be correct to use the 1st Conditional instead, "If the world explodes, we will die."
In my opinion, the zero conditional is correct here. Although we cannot directly, scientifically prove that the world exploding would indeed cause or deaths, based on other conditions that lead to our death (IE: exploding), that this theoretical scientific proof is sufficient enough to warrant using the zero conditional.
Thoughts?