Teaching 2nd Conditionals

So for today's teaching technique, i will share one of the techniques of how to teach 2nd conditionals sentences. As usual, before i start to do the activity, it's very important to present and tell the students about the function of the grammar that the teacher is going to teach. So that the students know how and when they can use it. At first, i tell them about the function of the 2nd conditional itself. I also give them the structure of the sentence by writing it on the board. After explain it a bit and give several examples sentences related to the 2nd conditional, then i start the drilling activity where the students can "use" the 2nd conditionals.

I provide paper (as you can see from the picture above) for my students. Luckily, those prompts have already provided in my teaching guide book. But, for those who doesn't have it, you can create it by yourself by typing it on the computer and print it or just ask the students to write it by themselves. On every prompt paper, there is a 2nd conditional question like:

- If you were a color, what color would you choose to be?
- If you were an animal, what animal would you choose to be?
- What would you do if you had wings?
- etc

The format of the prompt is like this:

- If you were a color, what color would you choose to be?
- You _________________________________________

PARTNER
Name _________________________________________
Answer________________________________________
Reason ________________________________________


Here are the steps of how to do the drilling by using that prompt:
1.  I distribute those paper to the students (One student will get one prompt). First of all, Teacher asks the students to answer the question that they get by themselves. But they have to answer it in a complete 2nd conditional sentence. Teacher can help the students to answer the question by writing the format of the sentence on the board. For example:

"If i were a color, I would choose Black because____________"  

2. After the students finish their task, Teacher can check their work by choose several students (depends on how many students you have in your class. If it's not that many, i usually ask all of them one by one) to tell their answer. 

3. Next, after you finish with the first task, now teacher ask students to pay attention to the "PARTNER" column. For the next step, Teacher asks students to mingle round the class and choose one other student (or more, it depends on how you create the prompt) and ask the question that they get to their partner. Students must pay attention to their partner's answer. They have to write the name of their partner, the answer and then the reason why they choose that answer. For example:

Q: If you were an animal, what animal would you choose to be? (this is the question that student has to ask to their partner)

PARTNER'S ANSWER: "If i were an animal, i would be a cat because....."

The student who asks this question must write his/her partner's answer on the column "ANSWER" and "REASON".

4. After you finish with the asking and answering question session, then you can ask your students to report the result to you. You can help them by writing the format of the sentence on the board: 

"Student A said that if he/she were an animal, he/she would be a........because....."

It might be a bit stuffy since teacher has to prepare several things. But for me, i don't mind to prepare things if my students can experience using the language by themselves. Because, teaching language isn't just about explaining things but it's about how you let your students to use that language itself. It's a language class and our purpose as a language teacher is to make them understand and how they can use it in their daily life. So that as a teacher, we have to provide space for them to listen, read, write, and speak by using the language that we teach. 

As additions, here are some resources that you can visit and use to teach the 2nd conditional:

- Busy teacher (2nd conditional teaching) 

- Tefltastic (2nd conditional activities) 

Please remember that you don't have to follow the steps 100% same as what i have written above. Teacher always can modify it based on your class environment. You are the teacher, you know your class and the students better than me. If there are more questions, you can click the asking box page or just leave the comment on this post. I will try my best to answer it. Hopefully it will be useful! Good luck!