In today’s (Wednesday 5.30) class we talked about conditionals. Specifically we talked about 1st and 2nd conditionals. We started the class with a short dialog. The dialog was:
A: What are you doing this evening?
B: I’m going to (gonna) play tennis.
A: Oh, yeah? It might rain. What will (whad’ll) you do if it rains?
B: If it rains, I’ll watch a movie. /I’ll watch a movie if it rains.
We were able to extend the conversation because B took on the role of a pessimist and continually asked questions about what A would do if the original plan was not possible (What will you do if the movie is sold out?/What will do if the power goes out?/What will you do if you are out of medicine?). It turned into a bit of a game. I was very impressed with how quickly both the optimists and pessimists thought of new ideas and questions. This game continued with plans over a longer time, with questions like, “What are you going to do this summer/next year?”
Just before the break, I asked the very mean question of, “What will you do/would you do if Mike finishes/finished the class at 3:20?” Everyone was very excited. Sorry to make you excited for no reason. My main point was that I would ask, “What would you do if Mike canceled class?” because this is a very unlikely situation. Almost as likely as:
“What would you do if aliens came to HUFS this afternoon?”
After the break we came back and started to talk about unlikely situations like the above questions.
A usual answer for the above question might be:
(If aliens came to HUFS) I would run away.
OR: I would offer Rooney and Royal to the aliens.
After some practice with these structures we practiced some typical questions that are very useful for getting to know someone (and often used in job interviews).
The questions were:
What would you do if you only had 24 hours to live?
If you could be any animal/superhero/plant/fish/mythical animal/famous person, what (who) would you be?
For a looong list of similar questions, click here.
I also mentioned that we had already talked about one of the most typical questions, “If you could only bring three items to a desert island what would you bring?” a long time ago.
There were not so many errors from the class. Actually I just wanted to mention two sentences.
Someone answered that if he/she had just 24 hours to live he/she would spend time with his/her lovely people. I think that he/she meant to say that he/she would spend time with his/her loved ones. Lovely means that something or someone is kind, enjoyable or beautiful, not that I love them.
In another example someone said that they would steal a bank if they only had 24 hours to live. This means to take the whole bank!! I think they meant to say that they would rob a bank or steal money from a bank.
Some words that were interesting/new/useful from this lesson were:
steam Steam came out of the iron.
monthly installments Anni pays her phone in monthly installments.
insomnia I am very tired because I am suffering from insomnia.
piranha He was eaten by a school of piranhas–it was a terrible death.
fireflies Rooney is a hard worker. If the power was out he would use fireflies to study.
mythical Everyone’s favorite mythological animal is the griffin.
I hope that this was a useful class for everyone. I will see you tomorrow if you come to class.
