Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies (40 page)

Avoid teaching phrasal verbs as a big topic in itself. Lessons about all the phrasal verb rules tend to be boring and confusing anyway because students don’t learn in this way.

Print copies of the rules so that students can use it as a reference, perhaps on a sheet they can keep at the back of their books. However, it’s best to teach just a few phrasal verbs at a time, in context and with lots of examples.

One way to teach ‘to put up with’ and ‘to fall out’ is by following these steps:

1. Start with spoken content.

‘Twins Paul and Paula live together. She is very untidy and likes to have her friends round every day. Paul likes his home to be quiet and organised. He loves his sister but maybe it’s time to move out. When he complains, they fall out, but after two years he can’t put up with the situation anymore’.

2. Have students discuss the situation.

Ask, ‘How do they feel about the situation?’

3. Display board work.

For

example:

• To put up with
s/t
(pv, inseparable)= to tolerate something

• To fall out (with
s/o
) (pv inseparable)= to argue then stop being friendly

• Paul can’t put up with Paula’s friends. They annoy him too much.

• Paula and Paul fall out whenever they talk about the problem because he shouts at her.

4. Have students do some practice exercises.

Write a sentence about each of the following situations using ‘to put up with’ or ‘to fall out with’ in the correct tense. For example: The man gets doesn’t complain when the neighbours play very loud music. The man
puts up with
his neighbours’ loud music.

Last week Evelyn and Debbie argued about where to go for the evening. They got angry and have not spoken since then.

Mrs Singh will not allow her son to continue smoking in the house.

The reason why the sisters were nervous about seeing each other was because they had had a big disagreement.

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5. Have students discuss similar situations in pairs.

Ask each other about other situations that result in people falling out and refusing to put up with things. When was the last time you fell out with someone and why?

If I Were You . . . Conditional Structures

Sentences beginning with ‘if’ are conditional. They’re always in two clauses, showing that one situation is dependent on another. Even though native speakers mix conditionals up a lot in real life, you need to teach the students gradually the four basic conditional structures I cover in the next sections.

A
clause
always contains a subject word and a verb.

With all these structures, teach the positive, negative and question forms and don’t forget the contractions too. For example, this is a positive sentence;
If
I’m unhappy, I eat more.
By comparison a negative version of the question contains
not
or its contraction (short form)
n’t.
So the negative version is;
If I’m
unhappy, I don’t eat more.
Notice that
don’t
(do not) is the negative part. The question form is,
If you’re unhappy, do you eat more?

Being general: The zero conditional

You use zero conditional sentences to say that something is generally true.

The situation is not just about a particular instance but is more a rule of thumb. In fact, you quite often use this structure to state a fact, principle or truth. For example:

If
you cool water below 0 degrees, it freezes.

When
you visit a place of worship, you dress appropriately.

Pairing ‘if’ and ‘when’

The zero conditional is the easy one to remember. It comprises two distinct clauses, both in the present simple, but one clause starts with ‘if’ or ‘when’. It doesn’t matter which clause goes first.

When
I feel tired, I take a nap.

If
it’s sunny, I sit on the balcony.

When
you really want something, you have to work hard.

People usually visit the Louvre,
when
they go to France.

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So the structure is:
If
plus present simple tense and a present simple verb in the other clause.

Formulating it for students

You teach the zero conditional at about pre-intermediate level. Generally, students have no difficulty understanding this structure but you break it down into a formula to prepare students for the other conditionals to come.

Try teaching conditionals with a chain story or dialogue. By that I mean that you build up the interaction clause by clause. For example:

Teacher: What do you do
when
you feel ill?

Student A:
When
I feel ill, I stay home instead of going to work.

Teacher:
When
you stay home, do you take medicine?

Student B: Yes,
when
I stay home, I take aspirin.

Teacher: Ask Alex about aspirin.

Student B: Do you feel better,
when
you take aspirin?

Student C: Yes,
whenever
I take aspirin, I feel better. En Feng, what do you do
when
you feel a bit better?

Matching exercises are a useful form of practice for conditional sentences.

So, you can divide the clauses and mix them up in two columns, like the one in Figure 17-1.

Match one half of the sentence 1) 2) 3) or 4) with the second half in a) b) c) or d). Write the sentences below.

Figure 17-1:
1) If I meet elderly people

a) it wants to go out

Matching 2) When Mark sees Elizabeth

b) I show respect

exercise

for the zero 3) If life is boring

c) he smiles

conditional. 4) If the dog starts looking at the door

d) people take a trip

Depending on the possible:

The first conditional

You use the first conditional for a situation that’s quite possible and realistic but still dependent on something else.

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Whereas the zero conditional uses the same tense in both clauses, the first conditional doesn’t. This time the structure is basically: ‘If’
or ‘when’ plus a verb in the present simple with a verb in the future simple in the other clause.

The structure still contains two clauses and one includes’ if’ or ‘when’, but it looks like this:

If
you aren’t nice to me, I’ll leave.

Will you help me fix my car,
if
I bring it to your house?

When
we finish this job, we will not stop.

You can swap ‘will’ for a modal verb or ‘to be going to’ as well:
If
you aren’t too busy, can you come to my office?

He might come,
when
it stops raining.

I’m going to
take away your toys, if you don’t stop spitting.

You can swap ‘if’ or ‘when’ for a couple of other expressions too, namely

‘whether or not’ and ‘unless’. In this case, you use a verb in the future simple tense first, then ‘whether or not’ or ‘unless’ followed by a verb in present simple (positive, meaning without
not
or
n’t
).

You will have to work late,
whether or not
you want to.

I won’t talk to you,
unless
you give me back my money.

Unless
something extraordinary happens, she’ll probably come.

But you can’t put ‘if’ or ‘when’ in the same clause as ‘will’, so you can’t say something like, ‘If I will see him, I will tell him’.

Following the chain activity and matching exercises in the section on the zero conditional, take this a step further by designing some 1st conditional dominoes, like those in Figure 17-2.

They’re a little time consuming to prepare initially, but if you use some sturdy card or a laminator, you can keep them for ages. The aim is for students to match sentence clauses together so that they make sense, and the first student to use all his cards is the winner. You may have to act as referee though!

Another way to give students practice in a freer way is to talk about threats, which are generally in the first conditional anyway. Tell the class an anecdote about a time when you were threatened and what happened and then say: Write about a time when you were threatened or made a threat yourself.

Explain why the situation happened and if the threat was carried out.

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Part IV: The Grammar You Need to Know – and How to Teach It
when I get

she’ll be

if I remind

will Janet

if I do what

Bob isn’t going

home

ready

her

help me

I promised

to argue

Figure 17-2:

First

if I buy him

it will be

when the new

there will be

if you don’t

conditional

a drink

cheaper

supermarket

queues

work harder

dominoes.

opens

Imagining the second conditional

The second conditional is a structure you use to express something that’s hypothetical, imaginary or unlikely. You usually teach this at intermediate level.

The second conditional confuses students at first because it uses the past simple tense but doesn’t actually refer to the past at all. The basic structure is: ‘If’
plus a verb in the past simple then the subject plus ‘would’ plus the infinitive form of the verb:

If
you won the national lottery, what
would
you buy first?

If
I were you,
I’d
stay away from him.

If
you found £100 in the street, I’m sure that you
would
give it to the police.

You can use ‘were’ for all the subject pronouns too. It sounds more formal than when you use ‘was’ in the normal way:

If I
were
here, it would be better.

If we
were
here, it would be better.

Remember that ‘if/when’ must never be in the same clause as ‘would’, so you can’t say, ‘If I’d be rich, I’d live in Miami’.

The structure of the second conditional is difficult to remember at first so you need to find interesting ways to fix it in your students’ minds. Here are a few suggestions:

✓

Use a song.
I have come up with several:

• ‘If I Ruled the World’
written by Ornadel and Bricusse and recorded by Tony Bennett

•

‘
If I Were a Boy’
written by Carlson, Gad and Beyonce Knowles, who recorded it.

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• ‘If I Were a Sailboat’
written and performed by Katie Melua

• ‘If I Were a Rich Man’
written by Zero Mostel and sung in the musical ‘Fiddler on the Roof’.

Blank out some words and get students to fill them in while listening to the song. However, the most important thing is to have a good old sing along. That’s what they’ll find most memorable.

✓

Lead
a jazz chant.
You may not have access to music, so how about a
jazz chant,
which is just words or phrases repeated in a rhythm? You’ve probably seen footage of army drill sergeants getting the chant in time with the soldiers’ marching, often through repetition. Jazz chants are similar. You simply get students to repeat sentences after you in whole or in part and to a beat (everyone should clap their hands). In this way they can more easily remember the structure, and pick up the rhythm of the language while they’re at it. Here’s an example of an easy second conditional chant:

Teacher:

If

Students:

If

Teacher: If I

Students: If I

Teacher: If I were you

Students: If I were you

Teacher: And you were me

Students: And you were me

Teacher: If I were you and you were me

Students: If I were you and you were me

Teacher: We’d be different

Students: We’d be different

Teacher: But still happy

Students: But still happy

✓

Play a game of moral dilemmas.
You can prepare cards with the dilemmas – some are shown in Figure 17-3 – in one pile and cards for the names of each student individually in another pile. For each round of the game you pick up a card from each pile and ask everyone in the class to write a sentence in the second conditional suggesting what the named student would do about the problem. After everyone has a minute to write something down, have a feedback session when you encourage the named student to confirm or deny what was said.

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If your classmate saw

the 13 year old child

of a colleague drinking

NATASHA

alcohol, what would

....................................

he/ she do?

Figure 17-3:

Examples

of moral
If his/her good friend

dilemma
looked awlful in her

JALE

cards using
expensive new dress,

....................................

the second
would your classmate

conditional.

tell the truth?

Reviewing the past with the