Third conditional - video and exercises

Good morning early birds!

Right, yesterday we briefly explained how to form the third conditional, we gave a few examples and mentioned when to use it. In case it still sounds a bit vague, and as we did with the other two types of conditionals, we are going to show you a video with the exaplanation today and then we will leave you with a pdf document for you to practise and do some homework.

Below you can watch a whole video explaining the third conditional with a few examples. By clicking on the video itself, you will be able to watch it all on their official youtube channel:

Credit: Third Conditional. (2016). YouTube. Retrieved 8 December 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuUkuORtfE0

Remember, we use the third conditional for situations that happened in the past and we cannot change anymore. Having a look at the first example of the video:

If he hadn't been late, he wouldn't have lost his job.

As you can observe, he had been late for work many times, so he used to be late for work. Consequently, he lost his job, they fired him. However, he cannot change that result, it happened and now... he regrets.

Once you have fully understood the third conditional structure, use and examples, click on the image below and do that worksheet for the 16th of December please.

By NeoMeesje - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45817942

Have a nice day, and start getting ready for Christmas!

Talk soon,

Pablo.

The third conditional

Welcome back, children!

This week we are going to study the third conditional in English. We already saw the first and the second conditional, so if you would like to refresh or revise them have a look at the previous posts.

Now, the third conditional, when do we use it?

We use the third conditional for talking about hypothetical situations in the past. In general, we use this tense for regretting that something happened or didn't happen in the past.

For example, imagine you had an English test a week ago, but you didn't study and you failed it. In this case, you could find yourself saying:

If I had studied, I would have passed...

Thus, you are talking about something that happened in the past but that you CANNOT CHANGE it anymore. In this case, you are somehow regretting that you hadn't studied enough.

Let's see another example:

I would have bought you a present if I had known it was your birthday...

Here, I did not know it was your birthday, so I regret it. If I had known, though, I would have got you something: maybe some flowers, maybe some chocolate... who knows? But what matters here is that I did not know it was your birthday, so I CANNOT CHANGE the past. I can only regret about it!

Now, what about the structure?

As always, you have two clauses:

Conditional clause: If I had studied - If + subject + had + past participle main verb

Result clause: I would have passed - subject + modal verb (would, could, might, may) + have + past participle

As we know, we can invert the clauses, and we would need to get rid of the comma:

I would have passed if I had studied.

Have a look at the following story from the British Council website in order to fully understand the context in which you can find or use the third conditional in English.

Credit: Third conditional. (2016). YouTube. Retrieved 7 December 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNelekMirTI

That's it for today,

Pablo.

Second Conditional - Videos and exercises

Heyo,

Yesterday we talked and explained the second conditional. We said when to use it, what is its structure and we showed a ppt from slideshare to give you some food for thought.

Today, as we did with the first conditional, I am going to show you some videos and examples for illustrating better the second conditional, so you can do some homework afterwards.

Nevertheless, to begin with I would like to specify something. When we stated the structure of the second conditional, we said the result clause needed to be made with the conditional tense using would. However, you can also use "might, may or could", as the videos you are going to watch now will say.

For example: 

If he ate healthy food, he could lose weight.

In this case, the result clause "he could lose weight" is made using the modal verb "could" plus the infinitive of the main verb, "lose".

For understanding better these examples, please have a look at these two videos with their credit:

Learn the English Second Conditional - English Classes. (2016). YouTube. Retrieved 6 December 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry3xEVEiF-0

Second conditional. (2016). YouTube. Retrieved 6 December 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEwcIsTKBU4

Finally, I am going to leave here some exercises for you to practise how to form the second conditional clauses. This HOMEHORK is for the 15th of December. Access the pdf by clicking on the following image please:

By Alex Proimos from Sydney, Australia - Doing Homework, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25648511

Have a good day ahead,

Pablo.

The second conditional

Good afternoon,

I hope you are all having a nice week. It is being rainy and cold outside, but I love it! It reminds me of my time in England...

Anyway, I wanted to talk today about the second conditional. Firstly, when do we use it?

We use the second conditional to talk about something that is not very likely to happen. If you remember well, the first conditional expresses a high posibility or chance of something to occur. Meanwhile for the first conditional the percentage was around 90% of the situation to happen, in this case we are talking about a 10% or even less. Then, we can state that we use the second conditional for talking about hypothetical situations. 

Let's see an example. In Spanish, for expressing this type of condition, you would say something like this: "si ganase la lotería, dejaría mi trabajo", which in English would be "if I won the lottery, I would quit my job". As you know, there is not a big chance of winning the lottery, but it might still happen. In that case, then, we use the second conditional.

How is the structure? As we mentioned in previous posts, there are two clauses:

Clause number 1: the condition, which you make with "if + verb in past simple"

Clause number 2: the result, which you make with the conditional simple tense (would).

In the example we saw before, first we have the condition "If I won the lottery" and later the result "I would quit my job", both separated by a comma. Remember that if you do not want to use the comma, you will need to invert the clauses, as it follows:

If I won the lottery, I would quit my job (with a comma)

OR

I would quit my job if I won the lottery (without comma)

It is also worth to mention that with the second conditional we use after the preposition "if" the subjunctive form of the verb to be with the personal pronouns I, he, she, it. That means that we use the form "were" instead of "was". For example, when giving advice to someone:

If I were you, I would buy the red car.

instead of:

If I was you, I would buy the red car.

Understood? Yes? Well, I would like you to have a look at the following power point presentation from slideshare and think about what you would do in those situations... For answering, you will need to reply to the questions (orally) using the second conditional! This HOMEWORK is for the 12th of December.

PS: remember to click on the image to be redirected to the ppt!

De CoRegistros - http://coregistros.com, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46900419 

Peace,

Pablo.

First conditional - video and exercises

Good afternoon children,

If you remember well, last week we saw how the first conditional works in terms of structure and when to use it. 

Today, instead, we have a much more exciting post, in which you will be able to watch a video with an explanation about the first conditional (in case there are still some doubts or questions) and a pdf document with some exercises for you to practise at home.

Below you can watch the full video. If you click on it, you will be able to watch it better on youtube. And the reference of the video is:

First Conditional - Tutor Time (English Grammar). (2016). YouTube. Retrieved 4 December 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ifCM8kJFKI

Remember, we use the first conditional for situations or results that are likely to happen, when the probability is, let's say, 90%. Having a look at the first example of the video:

If I study hard, I will pass the test.

If I study hard = condition

I will pass the test = result

As you can see, the chance is not 100% of it to happen, but approximate, since it is very likely to pass an exam if you have studied really hard before.

Once you have totally understood the first conditional structure, use and examples, try to click on the image below and do the HOMEWORK for the 8th of December please.

By woodleywonderworks - http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/4195916777/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31830988

Have a nice Sunday,

Pablo.

The English Student BLOG

Good morning!

Today I woke up really excited. Last night I discovered an awesome website for English learners and, why not, for teachers too. I am a freak and a big fan of art, specially when it comes to illustration and painting (although I do not do it myself).

So, surfing the internet I came up with this website called "The English Student" a fantastic page with wonderful resources for teaching and learning English, with the advantage that they all look great!

The story behind the blog of Jenny Kung, the author, is here: (click on the image!)

On the blog there are different sections, but make sure you have a look at the illustrations and the blog section itself. There are resources you can download for free, meanwhile others ask for a small amount of money, and they tend to go from 1$ to 5$. Anyway I think the best way of discovering something is trying it on your own, so feel free to click on the image below (one of Jenny's great illustrations) and yeap, enjoy!

Credit from this picture to https://www.theenglishstudent.com/, which you can also find on Twitter on @TheEngStudent

Spread the love,

Pablo.

The first conditional

Hi again, dear students!

Today we are going to talk about the first conditional. First of all, when do we use it?

We use the first conditional to talk about likely situation, things that are likely to happen. In Spanish you would say something like this: "si llueve, no iré al colegio", which in English would be: "if it rains, I will not go to school".

When you are stating this, probably it is a Sunday evening, you are at home, and you are looking out from your window, seeing the dark clouds approaching to each other. In that case, it is likely to rain, so you use the FIRST CONDITIONAL.

What about the structure? Oh well, that is really easy. You have two clauses:

Clause number 1: the condition, which you make with "if + verb in present simple"

Clause number 2: the result, which you make with the future simple tense (will).

Let's have a look at the example we gave before. "Si llueve, no iré al colegio", which would be "If it rains, I will not go to school". The two clauses are separated by a comma. First you have your condition (if it rains), and then you have your result (I will not go to school). So:

1st clause + comma + 2nd clause

1st clause: If + present simple of the main verb = If it rains

2nd clause: result, main verb with future simple will = I will not go to school

Thus: If it rains, I will not go to school.

However, can you say first your result and then your condition? Can you alter the order of the clauses? Of course you can! You just need to get rid of the comma in the middle then. Have a look at the example:

2nd clause + 1st clause = I will not go to school if it rains

Easy peasy, right? Well, have a look at the power point presentation attached by clicking on the image below and read a few more examples of first conditional sentences. And please, let me know if there is anything you do not understand by commenting on this entry!

By Pridatko Oleksandr - Ukraine, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3651620

See you later,

Pablo.

Conditionals

Hey! Welcome back!

As we stated in the introduction, in this blog we are going to talk about different games, resources, videos, websites, etc., for making your languages' learning much easier from now on. However, we are going to focus on the CONDITIONALS in English but, what the hell is that?

According to one of the definitions that we can find on this link (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/conditional), a conditional is:

Grammar 

(of a clause, phrase, conjunction, or verb form) expressing a condition.

But, what is a condition? We can say that it is something that you need to happen for having a specific result. For example:

If it rains, I will get wet.

The condition that you need for getting wet (the result) is that it rains first (condition).

Let's have a look at another sentence:

If you were here, I would go to the party.

In this case, the condition would be "if you were here", leaving us the result "I would go to the party" (maybe because it would be funnier, more entertaining or I just would like to be with that person).

Thus, we must say that those two parts of the conditional sentence, both the result and the condition are called in English clauses, and they are necessary for making our conditional statements.

As a final point, according to the probability that there is for something to happen we will have three different types of conditionals: the first, the second and the third. But do not worry too much about this now! We will explain them in the following entries. Here there is a picture to illustrate them though from a wonderful website for learning English through nice illustrations. If you click on the pic, you will be redirected to the website!

Credit from this picture to https://www.theenglishstudent.com/blog, who you can also follow on Twitter on @TheEngStudent

Lyrics training

Welcome my dear students!

Today we are going to talk about http://es.lyricstraining.com/ Lyrics Training, a website in which you will be able to practise your listening skills in a fun and dynamic way, I swear!

Basically you need to go to the main menu and then write down on the search bar the title of a song you would like to play with. As in this unit we will be talking about the first, second and third conditional, I have chosen "Time after time" from Cindy Lauper as an example, as you will see the first conditional there.

Go to the main bar and write down the title of the song

Once the video of the song appears (fingers crossed) and you click on it, you will need to choose your level. As we are in the last year of secondary high school, I would recomment you go, at least, for the intermediate level!

Choose your level. The more level you choose, the more words you will need to guess!

And there you go. The music and video will start playing, and you will need to fill in the gaps of the missing words that you hear in the song. You will have some time for doing so, and you will get some score too according to the words you can guess right. 

You will see something like this when you are filling the gaps of the song

If you are not able to understand the first time, do not worry! Just keep trying and, if you still feel overwhelmed, just download the lyrics and have a look at them!

Have a look and let me know how this exercise goes!

Have fun,

Pablo

Tea time! - Introduction

Oh, the Erasmus days...

Oh hello!

My name's Pablo and I am a teacher of both Spanish and English as a Second Language. At the moment I am living in my hometown, Petrer, a place around 30 kilometers away from Alicante, in the south east of Spain.

Some years ago I did a BA (Hons) in English Studies at the University of Alicante, graduating in 2013. After that, I lived in Manchester (United Kingdom) for three wonderful years, where I had the chance of doing my Erasmus Exchange Programe, working as a Spanish Language Assistant or even doing my Postgraduate Certificate in Education for teaching Modern Foreign Languages in secondary schools.

When the right time came, I left the UK for good and I went to work to Ankara, Turkey. There I taught English to primary school kids, and I loved it! The kids were so enthusiastic and curious about anything around them that it was a pleasure for me to be in that school. However, the political situation of the country got worse in a couple of months, and then...

I decided to come back home! So here I am, safe and sound doing this Master's Programme for being able to teach languages in secondary schools in Spain. Maybe it doesn't sound that exciting, but hey! This is just another stop in the journey.

As I always said, I ended up teaching languages not because they were my passion, but because they somehow found me. I am a teacher more than I am anything else, and I absolutely love this profession at the end of the day. I am really keen on international and multicultural education, and I will hopefully keep travelling and working around the globe in the next few years, learning from marvellous professionals, pupils and parents.

So, if you wanna know more about ESL or ELE, please stay tuned! If you are a trainee teacher, a languages student or just a professional who likes to grow professionally, on this blog you will find resources, materials, games, worksheets, videos and much more for doing your lessons interesting and enganging, I promise! And do not forget to check my Twitter or Youtube accounts too, please!

For the Master's Programme purpose, we will also dedicate some entries of this blog to write about activities and ideas for teaching the First, Second and Third Conditional in English for a group of students of 4th grade of ESO (Compulsory Secondary Education in Spain).

Feel free to comment, give constructive feedback or just suggest new topics to be discussed.

Thank you for passing by,

Pablo