Purdin, Missouri TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

This unit covers the different types of conditionals and reported speech (indirect speech) vs. direct speech. This was the first time that I had learned the various types of conditionals, especially since English is my native tongue and so I had not consciously realized that they broke down to the level below: 1) Zero conditional: if/when + present tense, present tense When you eat, you get full. 2) First conditional: if + present simple, will If you eat, you will get full. 3) Second conditional: if + past simple, would/ could/ might + base form of the verb If I won the lottery, I would move to Paris. 4) Third conditional: if + past perfect, would/ could/ might + have + past participle If I have won the lottery, I would have moved to Paris. 5) Mixed conditional: mixes the second & third conditionals - if + past perfect, would + base form of the verb If I had won the lottery, I would be in Paris now. This is followed by different examples of activities that can help students learn and practice the different types of conditionals, such as split sentences where they have to match the condition with the consequence, chain conditionals where each consequence becomes the condition in the next sentence, and role plays. The unit then covers reported speech versus direct speech, and carefully walks through examples of what changes: - question words remain the same - form of the verb changes into the positive form - the question mark goes away - the verb say changes to ask/ enquire, etc. - tense of the speech reported is the same as the reporting verb e.g. "What are you doing for dinner today" turns into "I asked him what he was doing for dinner today." (the quotes here are only to separate the phrases; there are no quotation marks in reported speech). Time expressions are also covered in this section, and specify how one should report time, especially if the person says "tomorrow" in direct speech, but by the time it is reported, it is in the past. In these situations, one would use "the next day" or "the following day" since "tomorrow" would not make sense. Finally, there is a section on how students can be taught direct vs. reported speech, such as through intermediary exercises (pretend a husband and wife aren't talking to each other except through a mediator and so the student would have to report everything to the each person) or through listening to media interviews and having the students report what the interviewer asked and how the interviewee responded.