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