Teach English in Loughborough - TESOL Courses

Conditionals and reported speech are 2 important chapters of English grammar.Conditionals contain “if” and they refer to present, past or future possibilities.We have 5 main conditionals:Zero conditional ( if/when +present tense, present tense), used for irrefutable facts.First conditional (if +present simple, will or modal verb), used for real future situation that is possible or certain, when the condition is fulfilled.Second conditional ( if + past simple, would/could/might +base form), used for unreal present or future hypothetical situation, which now is not true and may never be.Third conditional (if+ past perfect, would/could /might +have +past participle), used for hypothetical past actions (or non actions) and their hypothetical results.Mixed conditional (if +past perfect, would +base form), used for hyrpothetical past action and the hypothetical present result.Many students may be confused with the past tenses in the second conditional, which refers to the future. Or sometimes they can not spot difference between the first and the second or the third and the mixed conditionals.Good ideas for teaching the types of conditinals are exercises with split sentences to match the parts, to complete the conditionals with their own ideas, to make chain conditional sentences from one conditional sentence, to answer to dilemmas, which we give them, or ask them what would they do under certain circumstances ( 2nd conditional) . The role play “nuclear bunker” is also a very nice idea, where the students have a certain role/profession and try to convince the judge that they are the best candidate for the last place in a bunker.Reported speech is used to report what another person said. When we turn the direct speech to reported the verb tenses change, for example present simple to past simple, will to would, past simple to past perfect etc.Of course we have also exceptions, as in almost all grammar rules.The pronoun evidencing who is spoken to can also change, depending on the context.The general rule is that the present becomes past, “this” and “here” become “that” and “there”.Time expressions also change, for example “this day” change to “that day”.Due to the big number of changes in the reported speech, we must expect a lot of errors from the students.Teaching ideas for reported speech are intermediaries, where in a group of students, one trasmits a sentence to the other, reporting verbs, which is for higher levels, where the groups or pairs are being given direct sentences and they choose the appropriate reporting verb, media interviews, which the students can do based on current events.