Post
by revel » Thu Mar 31, 2005 6:20 am
Good morning all.
Beat me with a wet noodle, if you wish, I find the whole "conditionals" thing to be foolishness and unnecessary complication of structure, grammar and syntax. Save your disparraging remarks about my person or my teaching style or whatever, If I Were King of the World, students would certainly learn this material in a dramatically different manner.
However, as mentioned by others, we are often "forced" to teach this poppyc*ck because of the book we have been "forced" to use. Even when choosing the book myself, I find myself with the obligatory side-bar explaining the first, the second, the third, when, why, where....argh! And so after doing several exercises writing artificial sentences "If I met an alien on the street...." "If Julia Roberts rang my doorbell....", I decide to include a section on conditionals on the second trimester test. That way my boss, who is also a conditionals fan will think that I am actually teaching this oh-so-important aspect of ESL (I've mentioned elsewhere that I was asked in my job interview if I would be able to teach the conditionals, as if it were tantamount as an example of being a good ESL teacher).
So, I put a number of half-sentences under the title "First Conditional. Complete these sentences." However, the first half of the sentences provided was second conditional. The students who bothered to read the instructions happily wrote first conditional endings to second conditional sentences. The others, who either didn't read the instructions or just didn't associate first with one structure and second with another, completed the sentences "correctly", that is, in second conditional.
The experiement was accidental, there was no control group, the group is too small (ten students) to draw any useful conclusions. Exactly half taking the test wrote the wrong answers, though they were wrong because they were first conditional endings as instructed by the instructions. Half taking the test wrote the correct answer but had not followed instructions which is something I'm always harping at them about. I didn't realize my mistake until correcting the exam and finding this half and half thing. I finally threw the five sentences out and graded the exam without them. I can't interpret this anecdote (well, I can, but just don't feel like all the controversy on my person) and leave it to others to batter about.
peace,
revel.
] - then students experience how to extemporise with these structures.