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This unit was about conditionals and reported speech. As usual, some really good teaching ideas were presented for both conditionals and reported speech. I found this chapter to be, by far, the most difficult chapter of all . . . so far. In order to synthesize the material in this chapter one would need to know all the past tenses inside out and a good deal of the present and future tenses. One would need to know the minutiae of helping verbs and past participles and how not to confuse a helping verb with parts of a past construct [like 'I had had' vs. 'I had'] . . . One would need to juggle all sorts of time frames around. Although I think I understand why the reported speech material was put together with the conditional tenses in the same unit [both involve some kind of back shifting] . . . I felt that it was just way too much material to absorb. I began confusing tenses even though I went back and reviewed all my 'tenses' to begin with. I think it might help [but am not sure] to spend more time giving examples of the 5 conditionals we worked on including more examples in a question format. If one can hear these over and over, the slight differences in meaning begin to come through/make sense. For example: the difficulty between the second conditional and third conditional, for me, was rectified once I understood that the 'had' in the if clause . . . in the second conditional is not really a true 'past tense' per se . .. but a subjunctive kind of past usage that indicates unreality/improbability [speculation]; that a break from 'reality' or 'actuality' is indicated by this type of back-shifting. It took me a while to 'get that'. Thus, I needed to see and hear more examples!! All in all, a difficult chapter. This had me thinking that in order to teach this, I would need to know this material almost automatically [if it's hard for me, I cannot imagine how hard it must be for a non-native speaker]. I need a lot more work on this material till I feel more confident with it. I did spend a lot of time on this unit and I'm glad I didn't rush through it. Thank you.
