Conditionals - First Conditional

Mum: If you don’t wrap up warm, you’ll catch a cold.

Teenager: I think you should wrap up.

Mum: And if you carry on like that you won't get any dinner tonight.

Teenager: Don't want any dinner.

Statement of form

If + present simple, will + base form

What students need to know

We use this to talk about what’s possible, given certain conditions. The speaker sees whatever it is as a distinct possibility, not a remote one. A very similar structure is used with sentences that are not technically conditional:

When you grow up, you’ll understand.

Unless you grow up, you won’t get any pie.

After you do the washing up, we’ll see about getting  a rabbit.

What students struggle with

Firstly, meaning. It depends a bit on what language the students are coming from. Most have some version of “if” and some have a very similar structure. But the subtlety in English is in the greater likelihood expressed by first conditional compared with, say, the second conditional.  Conversely, it expresses a reduced likelihood when compared with zero conditional. So, students are usually perfectly OK with this structure until they start learning other ones!

Pronunciation. Correct pronunciation of “will” and “won’t” both cause problems. “will” because of its contraction with the subject, which requires the student to simultaneously think, “will” but say “ull”:

“…he’ll”  “she’ll”  “the Prime Minister’ll…” etc.

“Won’t” is of course the contraction of “will” and “not” and, when you think about it, is totally different. It also contains the vowel sound /əʊ/, which is deceptively simple: not many languages have an exact equivalent of the sound; not many students can say it.

Form. The main clause (the bit without ‘if’) uses good old “will”, which students readily associate with a future reference. In the conditional clause (the other bit) we use present simple. Present simple to talk about the future? This can put the average student out of their comfort zone rather quickly. Fortunately, something very similar happens in a number of other languages, so it could be worse. Even so, you’ll frequently hear the error,

“If it will rain, we will take an umbrella.”

Generative situation

How to get across town

Establish with your class the situation of asking for directions.

You need a simple town plan indicating where the speakers are, and including several landmarks:  perhaps a pub, a supermarket, a fish and chip shop, a post office etc.

Give students a cloze to complete with reference to the map:

If you go along here, you’ll see the _____ on your right. If you keep going you’ll come to the  ______. If you turn right there, you’ll pass the _______ on your left. If you carry on for two minutes, you’ll find the _______ straight ahead. You can’t miss it.

This is actually quite an authentic use of the structure and, having completed the cloze, you then have several examples with which to proceed.

Fun practice

Bribery

Establish with the class that it is not unknown for people to buy off officials in order to, err, hasten the bureaucratic process. Your students may even know of a country where this, ahem, takes place.

Elicit a few situations in which this might happen:

Caught by a traffic policeman: “If you give me £50, we’ll forget this ticket.”

Getting ahead in education: “If you give my son a place at university, I’ll give you £5000.”

Evading the Tax office: “If you pay in cash, we’ll call it a round thousand.”

Choose a typical situation and get students to write a dialogue that might take place, making use of several “offers” made in the first conditional.

Advert promises

Bring into class a number of magazine advertisements for a variety of well-known products and brands. Many of them of course will come with slogans. The students job is to add a line to each one, using the first conditional. Elicit an example or two from the whole class to start:

For a McDonald’s advertisement:

If you like burgers, you’ll love McDonald’s!

For cat food:

If your cat enjoys Cat-O-Meat, she’ll think Cat-O-Meat 2 is even better!

Students work in groups. Their task is to write the most persuasive line for each product.

Or, to increase the amount of incidental language practice, get the students to produce short dialogues like this:

Do you like like cars?
Yes, I do.
Well, if you buy the new Chevrolet, you'll love it!
Ok, thanks. I will!
They can then rehearse and act out these cheesy commercials. In so doing, they're getting incidental practice of present simple questions and short answers, as well as the natural decision, "I will."