Teacher Discussion Forums

Hey There,

I am trying to prepare a mini-lesson for a graduate level (Applied Linguistics 2) assignment on the conditional, and am running into a little confusion:

Online sources break down the conditional according to "zero conditional," "first," "second," and "third conditional." Meanwhile, THE GRAMMAR BOOK (if you know it) does not use these terms. I want to use online resources, but I'm a bit hesitant because THE GRAMMAR BOOK is our main textbook, and I want to stay consistant with it's interpretations.

Does anyone know why the text doesn't use these terms? Any related feedback would be welcome. Thanks!

What TERMS does THE GRAMMAR BOOK use?

It uses descriptive terms like Factual, Future (Predictive) and Imaginitive. It says that other textbooks are "oversimplified" in there tratment of the conditional, but I usually find this book to be over-complicated, and often cryptic.
Are you familiar with this book?

If you do a search for keyword 'conditiona*' in all posts by author 'Stephen Jones' in the 'Applied Linguistics' forum (i.e. correctly complete those 3 fields of the search function), you'll get 17 results, of which this for example is the second:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... 4764#24764

The short answer is that, common though those four types of conditional may be or seem, there are in fact more than those four types in wider usage to account for and possibly explain and categorize, and that doing so will probably make everything (i.e. the language in its authentic whole, when it rears its ugly head, which is basically all the time in the real world!) easier to understand in the long run.

I have the Grammar Book (2nd ed), but unfortunately haven't read its chapter on conditionals recently enough to remember much of what it says (I did however recently look at its one on articles, and it has some facts or ways of putting things that will certainly complement and/or fill gaps in other stuff I'm reading); stick with it, but try to look at other books or get other opinions too (but wait, that's what you're doing on this thread!). I might try to re-read its conditional chapter at some point and get back to you, unless SJ himself or others (Woody et al) do first.

Something about some teacher('s or s') basic reactions to Swan's PEU, and the COBUILD Grammar:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic ... 229#700229

It seems to be the GRAMMAR BOOK which is trying to make things simpler by giving a concrete name to the usual thing, ie 0.Factual 1st.Future 2nd.Imaginative. It doesn't matter too much about that. The important thing is how you explain the limitations in the approach, which is tricky to do.

I like the iconoclastic approach sometimes:

The so-called zeros are simply when "if" is a synonym of "whenever"and the firsts are just time-clauses for pessimists.

The only conditionals perhaps worthy of the name are the so-called second, third and mixed ones, which are just some examples, using the word "if", of how English tends to deal with the counterfactual.