Tuesday 6 December 2016

How to make a cup of tea AKA a conditional sentence...

Have you ever wondered how to explain the form of a conditional sentence to a bunch of nine-year-olds?

While my students had no problems deducing or discovering the meaning of the conditional sentences, they almost always struggled with the form. I have always wondered why, at the end of the day it's just If + Present Simple, will + infinitive. I even got the students to memorise this formula, but as you can probably imagine - it is never that easy. Memorising never equals learning but I guess even teachers learn through their own guided discovery - make a mistake, spot the mistake and correct it.

And so, one day I asked my students how to make a cup of tea. It was a funny situation because they listed everything but a... cup. And as everyone knows, you can't have a cup of tea without a cup!

I took my students to the staff room and we prepared a real cup of tea. I got everything they listed plus all the extras (sugar, milk, sweetener, teaspoon). And then I asked them if I could start pouring the hot water over the teabag. Finally, someone said "Teacher! You need a cup!". At that moment I asked my students whether the cup was important or not. They all agreed that it was essential.

Therefore, the cup became my "IF". All the conditional sentences start with if (I know, not all of them, but don't forget we're dealing here with a bunch of nine-year-olds, we don't want to complicate it too much). And IF we want to make a cup of tea, we need something simple like... HOT WATER, and something characteristic of a cup of tea - a tea bag (will)!



My students remembered the formula immediately, and I never had to repeat it again. What's more, whenever they lost some part of the sentence, I just said "Ana, where's the teabag?" And my students knew which part of the sentence was missing.

One week later, following the same pattern, we learnt how to make a cup of coffee - 2nd conditional sentences. This time, everyone started with the "CUP - IF". And making conditional sentences resulted being a piece of cake, ahem, a cup of tea/coffee, for my students.  

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