Second conditional | TEFL Lesson for Intermediate Adults

The following comprises an edited version of the lesson plan (and material) I created when completing my TEFL qualification.

For my final TEFL assignment I elected to create a lesson plan for teaching the second conditional to a group of 10 intermediate adult students, all of whom speak English as a foreign language.

View the full lesson plan here.

View the board game I created with associated instructions here.

View the presentation below:

Presentation: Second Conditional

The lesson follows a PPP (present, practice, and produce) format, with a warmer at the beginning and a cooler at the end (as well as a feedback session in between practice and production). The reasons for this are that 1) it has been several years since I last taught an ESL class and I wanted to utilise a tried-and-tested lesson plan method, and 2) I feel it is important for students to receive clear guidelines from a teacher or facilitator for a grammar concept like the second conditional (present phase) in order to guide their understanding of the subject, as well as to have the opportunity to practice using this new form of language themselves (practice and produce phases).

I selected this topic as it allows students to practice speaking about the future, but in an enjoyable way, as there is a lot of room for creativity and outrageous sentiments and statements when it comes to the second conditional. Although students may spend a good portion of the lesson laughing and having fun (well, that’s the idea anyway!) they will also be learning valuable sentence constructions for speaking about the future.

The topic could, however, present the following difficulties:

1. Students may struggle to think in terms of the second conditional (thinking could lean towards using first conditional language); i.e. unreal possibility – Although a good secondary aim for the lesson could be to revise the first conditional and differentiate it from the second, I would need to avoid students getting stuck in first conditional thinking mode.
2. Topic may come across as too imaginative or speculative for students with a business focus – Often adult students are more focused on learning English for business, so it would be important to highlight the potential uses of this language construction for the business world. For example, “If I became the CEO of the company tomorrow, I would…”
3. Potential initial difficulties with the “If I … I would …” structure [condition (past simple) + result (would + base verb)] – There is always a good chance that students will struggle with new language constructions, and sufficient support will need to be provided to ensure that they are able to use this form of speaking by the end of the lesson.
4. Potential confusion with “could”, “should”, “might” and “would” – All of these words can be used in second conditional sentence construction, but students may struggle with the nuances between each.

The final learning aim of the lesson is for students to practice using the second conditional. Each activity will contribute to this aim as follows:

1. Warmer: To get students thinking in terms of “if” sentences.
2. Song and matching exercise: To introduce students to “if” sentences in light-hearted way that will get them thinking about second conditional sentences in terms of how they differ from talking about “real” events that could happen.
3. Pair work: To allow students time to practice using the second conditional in a controlled environment and for the teacher to pick up on any areas that need to be addressed after the practice session.
4. Drill and CCQs: To double check that all students are now aware of second conditional sentence structure.
5. Board game: To allow students to use the second conditional in a higher stakes environment (for a prize) and for student to assess each other’s use of this grammatical structure.
6. Debate: To allow students to use the second conditional in a more serious way and for students to practice speaking and debating a topic.
7. Cooler: To calm the class down and bring the lesson to a close.

There were a couple of activities I thought of including but decided against:

1. Moral dilemmas, e.g. “What would you do if you had to choose between letting a war criminal go free so that he’d stop the war and continuing the war until he could be brought to justice?”: I decided not include this as I thought it would be too advanced for an intermediate group and could also be too controversial or serious for the fun atmosphere I was hoping to create in the lesson.
2. “If I were you” questions, such as “If I were in your place, teacher, I would…”: I decided not to use this, mainly due to time constraints. However, this could easily have been used in place of the debate segment currently planned for the lesson.

Both of the above activities (particularly number 2) would be kept in mind during a “real life” lesson in case any of the activities during the lesson did not work out the way I have planned. My main fear is that students will work through what has been planned too quickly, leaving me to fill the time with other activities. The above activities could be used to address this issue should it arise.

Another area where things could go wrong is the music video. Students may struggle to understand the strange language used, or may feel uncomfortable with the words (as it is a love song). One way to address this is to be extremely aware of how students are reacting to the song while it plays, and potentially skip most of it to jump straight to the Matching exercise, which covers the more amusing areas of the song. This activity could be built out further by asking students to think up similar love song phrases that they think would work better for a modern day love song.