Discuss news stories with third and mixed conditionals

Discuss news stories with third and mixed conditionals

In pairs or small groups, choose a news story that you both know about/ all know about, or explain a news story to each other (e.g. a story that you prepared to talk about for homework). Together, make sentences about aspects of those stories which could have been different using sentences like those below, using as many of the sentence stems as you can.

Useful language for discussing the sentences “I agree.” “I agree, but another possibility is…” “Maybe, but perhaps…” “Really? I think that…”

 

If he/ she/ they/… had(n’t) said _____________________, ________________________.

 

If he/ she/ it/ they/… had ____________________ instead, ________________________.

 

If he/ she/ it/ they/… had _________________ too/ as well, ________________________.

 

If he/ she/ they hadn’t _________________ (so much), ________________________.

 

If he/ she/ it/ they/… had _________________________ later/ earlier/ at a different time, ____________________________________________________________________.

 

If I had been in that situation, ____________________________________________.

 

If ___________________________________________________________________, things would have gone (a little/ quite a lot/ much) better.

 

If ___________________________________________________________________, things would have gone (a little/ quite a lot/ much) worse.

 

Even if ______________________________________________________________, things wouldn’t have changed (much).

 

If the same thing had happened to ___________________________ (as well/ instead), _____________________________________________________________________.

 

If ___________________________________________________ then/ at that time/…, ___________ would __________________________________________________ now.

 

Read out three sentences you wrote to the class, see what they can guess about the real news story they are based on, then see if they agree with your sentence.

Ask about any sentences above you are not sure how to complete, working together as a class to use them to talk about a story everyone knows about each time.