258 Part IV: The Grammar You Need to Know – and How to Teach It
Figure 17-2:
First
conditional
dominoes.
when I get
home
she’ll be
ready
if I remind
her
will Janet
help me
if I do what
I promised
Bob isn’t going
to argue
if I buy him
a drink
it will be
cheaper
when the new
supermarket
opens
there will be
queues
if you don’t
work harder
Imagining the second conditional....................................................
The second conditional is a structure you use to express something that’s
hypothetical, imaginary or unlikely. You usually teach this at intermediate
level.
The second conditional confuses students at first because it uses the past
simple tense but doesn’t actually refer to the past at all. The basic structure
is: ‘If’ plus a verb in the past simple then the subject plus ‘would’ plus the
infinitive form of the verb:
If you won the national lottery, what would you buy first?
If I were you, I’d stay away from him.
If you found £100 in the street, I’m sure that you would give it to the
police.
You can use ‘were’ for all the subject pronouns too. It sounds more formal
than when you use ‘was’ in the normal way:
If I were here, it would be better.
If we were here, it would be better.
Remember that ‘if/when’ must never be in the same clause as ‘would’, so you
can’t say, ‘If I’d be rich, I’d live in Miami’.
The structure of the second conditional is difficult to remember at first so you
need to find interesting ways to fix it in your students’ minds. Here are a few
suggestions:
✓ Use a song. I have come up with several:
- ‘If I Ruled the World’ written by Ornadel and Bricusse and recorded
by Tony Bennett
- ‘If I Were a Boy’ written by Carlson, Gad and Beyonce Knowles,
who recorded it.
