Conditional Mashups is a simple activity to have your class practicing conditionals.

It also encourages your students to use their imaginations which is never a bad thing!

Preparation

For this you’ll need loads of slips of paper. Each slip should have a dividing line right down the middle. Later a conditional sentence will divide them:

Later you will get your class to come up with unusual, weird and different conditionals. If you think that this might be a little difficult for your class you can always write in the half the sentence as a prompt:

If I tried to lift 300 kilos…

If the sun refused to shine…

If I had four arms…

…I’d eat my own shoes.

…I would never watch television again.

…I would make jump up and down 1,000 times.

Be sure to get inventive!

In Class

The first step is to go over conditionals with your class; make sure they understand how to form them. With the class write up some strange conditionals.

If I tried to lift 300 kilos I’d break my back.

If I found a thousand euros I’d employ someone to do my homework.

If I played for Manchester United I’d lose every game because I love Arsenal!

Divide the class into groups of 4 and then give out the slips of paper and tell them that on each one they need to write a conditional. On the left is the if… clause, on the right is conditional clause. The conditional needs to be as weird and wonderful as they can make it.

While the class are doing this, go round and encourage imagination, prompt and help.

Then get the class to cut the slips of paper in half and jumble them all up. When they’ve done this they swap papers with another group and try to reassemble what they have in front of them.

Often they will come up with very strange combinations but as long as they’re grammatically correct, that’s fine. Encourage this kind of thinking and get the best conditionals read out in class for everyone’s amusement.

As an optional extra you can award points to teams who have managed to put together the original conditionals or the best conditionals or the ones that make the class laugh.

Useful Links

Conditionals in English Grammar – an introduction to conditionals

Conditional Clauses in English Grammar – about clauses in conditionals