Conditionals - Zero Conditional

Cop: Freeze! Nobody move!

Villain: That’s a bit like absolute zero, officer.

Cop: Eh?

Villain: Well, if you freeze water down to absolute zero, nothing moves – not even the molecules.

Cop: In the van!

Statement of Form

if + present tense, present tense 

(or, more generally)  if + time reference, same time reference

What students need to know

You don't mess with zero conditional. It expresses hard facts:

If you don't attend school, you flunk the semester. Period.

If you heat water, it boils - you got that, pumpkin head?

“I’m not saying my school was rough, but if you made eye contact with a dinner lady, she spat in your lunch.”

In terms of form, students need to know that zero conditional has the same tense before and after the comma, roughly speaking.  So there's no "will" or "would" or other modals, as there would be with first, second or third conditionals. This because we're talking about what the speaker sees as facts, pure and simple.

What students struggle with

Apathy, mostly. Rightly or wrongly, the majority of students are introduced to conditional sentences in the following order: 1^st conditional, second, third, mixed, then finally zero. Because it doesn't fit the pattern in terms of form, students who are just managing to put together a convincing 1^st conditional see this is just another ambiguity to throw on the pile of “learn later”.

Generative situation

Rules of the game. Prepare a set of sentences relating to the rules of several different games, and mix them up. Ten or twelve would be ideal, but they should be something like this:

If the serve hits the net, you take it again.

If your opponents score a goal, you re-start the match.

If you win two sets, you win the match.

If you hit the ball out, you lose the point.

If you score a try, you get three points.

If your ball is further from the hole, you play first.

The class has to sort them out into their respective sports. They then see if they can add any rules for the sports they’ve identified. You step straight in to phrase them in zero conditional form:

E.g. student: “The player use less shot is going to won.”

Teacher: “Oh, OK, if you use fewer shots, you win.”

After all this, you’ll have several examples from which to go ahead and establish that we’re talking about facts, and examine the form of the sentence.

Note: Also works without materials, but you need to get students to come up with lots of rules of, say, tennis.

Fun practice

Gym leaflet. If you can find an actual gym flier, it would be a good way to start, but it’s not essential. Establish that gyms want to make their claims sound like hard facts to encourage you to join. They also need a motivating slogan. Here are a few I found from a quick look online:

“If you’re tired, in pain, out of breath, it’s working.”

“If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.”

“If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.”

“If the bar ain’t bending you’re just pretending.”

“If you feel like vomiting, you’re doing it right.”

Try showing students the first part of one or two of these, and see who can come closest to guessing the ending. Then get them into teams, with paper, card and coloured pens. The have to design a gym flier, including a good slogan and some hard-hitting claims. The aim is to produce the best, most motivational leaflet.