Here’s a funny second conditional video you can use with your intermediate students. It’s based on a short excerpt from Jay Leno’s talk show.
This is the third (and possibly last) installment of my second conditional trilogy, which started out as a collection of song clips and later developed into a funny reading (which had a surprisingly lukewarm reception) containing dozens of examples of the so called second conditional. So called, incidentally, is probably the right term to be used here, since the seemingly neat “first / second / third” categories that ELT has traditionally imposed upon us are far, far blurrier than we’d like to think.
For example, in the segment you’re about to watch, Jay Leno does use would to hypothesize about the present, but there’s no past form in the same sentences. So, in that sense, the “second conditional” post title is slightly misleading – but VERY Google friendly, so what the heck! By the way, stay tuned for an upcoming post in which I will attempt to argue that, in reality, there’s no such thing as second conditional. Or first or third for that matter. But I digress.
The video segment you’re about to watch is really short and you can use it to introduce the notion of hypothesizing – possibly before a full-fledged second conditional lesson. Alternatively, you can skip the grammar analysis screens and use the video as a quick lead-in to a speaking / skills-based lesson. It’s up to you.
Thanks for reading.
I do agree with you on this way of think about the conditionals. The separation is kind of needed in order to put some order in Grammar books but absolutely obsolete if you consider the way a native speaker communicate. In real English there is no time to think about which structure we gonna use. After reading Michael Lewis’ “The English Verb” I changed my mind about how we learn or teach. Obviously we need to follow some rules, but they are not always “rules”.
Awesome topic! Congrats…
Hi, Leo. Thanks for stopping by.
Yes, some degree of “order” is necessary if we are to write helpful, learner and teacher friendly books – and I’m saying this as a coursebook writer myself.
I just wonder, though, whether there is, perhaps, another way to “package” the conditionals which is both user-friendly AND representative of real language use.