Sorry, but if he comes, I go:

teaching conditionals
David Maule

This article looks at the rather restricted selection of conditional

sentences
which tends to be presented to students. It cites one case of the damage to a
students natural development
which this might cause and, on the basis of a
fairly small sample of the language in use, points to the limited application
of these structures.
The article also indicates a whole area of meaning
which is more or less ignored by current coursebooks
and pedagogic
grammars.
Introduction

In one of my classes, the sentence at issue was Sorry, but if he comes, I go. As far
as one student was concerned,
there was no question of this sentence being
even remotely well-formed.
At the time we were doing a post-mortem
on a
session of Grammar
monopoly
from Grammar Games (Rinvolucri
1984:52),
in which students
have to decide whether
certain
given sentences
are
correct or wrong. Christine
was French,
intermediate
in the sense of
being advanced
enough to know better, and her refusal to budge over this
one was absolute.
She even took it home for her host family to mull over -the
wife was a
member of staff and I got the story the next morning -and
only grudgingly
gave in after all present
had solemnly
assured
her of their willingness,
indeed
eagerness,
to use such a construction
given
the appropriate
circumstances.
The case becomes more intriguing
when we consider that the sentence is
more or less directly translatable
into French. In fact, I would suspect that,
rather than L1 interference,
it was teacher interference
that lay at the root
of the problem and that Christine
was suffering from over-exposure
to the If
it rains Ill stay in If it rained I would stay in If it had rained I would have stayed in that
is all you know and all you need to know approach
to conditionals.

A small sample

I recently
made a collection
of 100 conditionals
from television.
The
programmes
watched
were dictated purely by personal
taste, and took in a
wide range of offerings,
scripted
or otherwise,
on all four U.K. channels.
There is no way that this sample can pretend to be representative
of the
language
in use, but it may serve to make one simple point. Of the 100
sentences
gathered,
a staggering
total of 7 conformed
to the standard
Type
1 If + Present Simple - will + verb pattern
so beloved of coursebooks
and
pedagogic
grammars.
What
was rather
more
significant
was that
14 -exactly
twice that number -were
of the If + Present Simple + Present
Simple pattern
which had so disturbed
the student
mentioned
above.
Aside from these two groups there were another
40 real non-past
conditionals
which made use of present tenses, the imperative,
modals, be to,
have to, have got to, going to, etc. A few examples
may be useful here:
ELT Journal

Volume 42/2

April 1988

Oxford University Press 1988

117

articles

welcome

Well, if you want them, vote for them.

If theres a vacancy in the Tory leadership, Mr Heseltine would be a candidate.

If youve got a tiny garden ..., then this is the plant for you.
If you dont like the way Im handling it, you can take the appropriate steps.
If the law is deficient, Parliament must change it.
...andif you can find, from a position of strength, the opportunity to negotiate with
them, you should.
If youre thinking of throwing yourself away, throw yourself my way.
If theyve busted my engine, Ill sue them.
If he finds out, hes going to kill me.
If itll make you feel better, we will call her in and question her tomorrow.
In teaching Type 1 conditionals,
it seems to
to favour the If + Present Simple + will + verb
almost as an abstract
pure form, and consign
some sort of dustbin
reserved
for second-class
case, the strategy would appear to have worked,
but if he comes, I go as if it were entirely lacking
Classroom

A short

procedure

cut or a dead
end?

118

be a fairly common practice

version, indeed to treat this
the bulk of actual usage to
structures.
In Christines
in that she reacted to Sorry,
respectability.

Michael Lewis, in his recent book, The English Verb (Lewis 1986), makes the
point that to indulge in artificial simplification
is merely to store up trouble
for the future. The damage is compounded
when the simplified
explanation
is backed up by a few well-vetted
examples,
inconvenient
exceptions
being
actively suppressed.
Mhen these two tendencies
are unleashed
on this area we run the risk of
our students
coming to believe that either the standard
Type 1 structure
is
the only way of dealing
with real non-past
conditions,
or, perhaps at a later
stage, that it is the correct way, and that all other examples
encountered
are colloquial,
or dialectal,
or instances
of sub-standard
usage. Incidentally, it is worth noting that if the collection I made is in any way representative, suppression
of other structures
would involve ruling out something
like 90 per cent of real non-past
conditionals.
One argument
which I have heard in favour of the traditional
approach
is
that, while the If + Present Simple - will + verb form may not be the only one
possible,
it is certainly
the most useful in that it can function
as an
acceptable
substitute
for various others. But any attempt
at a statistical
approach
to this problem
falls on the question
of what exactly constitutes
an acceptable
substitute.
Clearly,
the sentence
If you suffer from blocked
sinuses, this is where it hurts is much more amenable
to conversion
than is
if
Valentines Day is so romantic, why is the heart used as a symbol of love?
We must also consider the fact that many examples of usage (20 per cent
of real non-past
occurrences
in the sample) use an alternative
to the present
simple in the if- clause. Look, if you bleed, you wont do it over me has very little in
common
with the original: Look, if youre going to bleed, dont do it all over me.
I would suggest that this approach
is of limited value. There are no real
short cuts in language
learning.
If students
are equipped
only with If +
Present Simple will + verb, they will be able to function appropriately
only
in those situations
where this structure
is acceptable.
The idea that one
structure
can be used for every situation -rather
on the lines of an adjustable spanner -seems
to be based more on teacher
convenience
than on
student
need.
We might also consider whether giving students
the idea -as
this sort of
David Maule

articles

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approach
inevitably
must -that
two distinct
structures
are interchangeable in all possible contexts doesnt downgrade
the importance
of context
itself as well as placing severe limits on the students
potential
for effective
communication.
It would seem to be both more efficient in terms of language
learning,
and more true to the language
as it is used, to expose students
to as many
examples
as possible of real non-past
conditionals,
involving
the full range
of possible combinations,
rather than to try to place them in some sort of
structural
straitjacket.
In practical
terms, this does, however,
pose some difficulties.
Domesticated language,
tamed, trained, and classified according
to our needs, can
be readily found within the pages of the textbook or grammar.
Appropriate
specimens
of the genuine variety are rather more difficult to track down. It
took me 104 hours viewing to gather the 100 conditionals
in the sample. Of
these, 61 were of the real non-past
variety. This works out at 5.8 per hour, or
one every 10 minutes
32 seconds.
So the teacher
who simply relied on exposing
students
to structural
variation
by running a cassette or a video would be faced with a great deal
of waiting in return for very little. In a different medium,
the same result
would proceed from scanning
of written texts. Those with unlimited
time,
energy, and perhaps
a large enough budget to take in a video editing suite
might consider making a special collection.
For the rest of us, some form of
compromise
with undiluted
realia is probably
in order.
One possibility
is shown below. As it stands,
this is a fairly difficult
exercise and would be most suitable for an advanced
class. The sentences
are all from the sample,
and the variety
of structural
items is further
complicated
by clause order, negatives,
questions,
etc. The exercise could
of course be made easier by eliminating
these variations
or by using
specially written sentences,
provided
that the variety of structural
items is
maintained.
It is not essential that the sentences
are real, although it helps.
The main point is that students
brought
up on the standard
forms should
accept that other varieties
are in common
use.

Find the Joker

The sentences
extra sentence

below can be divided into three groups of four, with one

which does not fall into any group. Can you sort them out?

1 If its in the news, its in the News.

2 What would you do if you werent doing gymnastics
now?
3 . . . if you can find one, and youve got room to grow it, then buy it.
4 Would you have put on a waterproofjacket
if we had?
5 If its all the same to you, Ill settle down and listen to some real
music.
6
whereas
if they had perhaps
lived on to old age with their looks
going and all the rest, then the legend wouldnt
have survived them.
7 Dont know, and if I did, I wouldnt
tell you.
8 If you like swimming,
theres a pool just down the road.
9 If Giles had been trampled
to death by a camel, it would have broken
my heart.
10 You could probably
do some damage
if you were to, say, hit
somebody.
11 If youre going to reheat them, youve really got to cook them
through.
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12 I bet you wouldnt

have said that if Sam had been losing.
13 I suppose Id be wasting my breath if I invited you to accompany
GROUP
GROUP
GROUP
JOKER

1
2
3

Nos: Nos: Nos: No

-

me.

Using this exercise it should be possible

to get over some basic ideas
about the variety of structures
tolerated
by the three established
types of
conditionals,
and also, as a bonus, the further notion that not all if sentences are conditional
(cf. No 8, the Joker).
The slant of the teaching will of course depend on the amount of exposure
the students
have had to the traditional
Types l-3 structures.
The above
exercise
probably
falls under
the heading
of shock treatment
for the
deluded.
For students
who can be caught earlier, one possible approach
might be to dispense altogether
with the idea of the conditional
as a special
form. I would suspect that most teachers tend not to allocate much space to
similarly structured
sentences
which begin with assuming (that), but for, given
that, provided (that), supposing, unless, when, etc. in their teaching
of The
Conditional.
This does not seem to prevent students from learning to make
use of them.
If-sentences
can be introduced
at a fairly early level in concert with other
forms. For example,
the interchange:
Ive got toothache/You should see a dentist
(structure:
modal auxiliaries;
function:
giving unnecessary
advice)
can
easily be extended
to If shes got toothache, she should see a dentist. Examples
do
not need to be enumerated,
the whole point being that real non-past
conditionals
are not sufficiently
different
from other structural
combinations as to require treatment
in isolation.
With what are traditionally
known as Type 2 and Type 3 conditionals
I
found a much closer conformity
to the standardized
patterns
(Type 2: If +
Past Simple would + verb, Type 3: If + Past Perfect - would have + past
participle). However, it may be worth pointing out that the continuous
forms
of the tenses are also available
and that various items-could,
should, might,
etc. -are
possible in place of would.
A neglected

area

Aside from the examples dealt with above, which may be classified in terms
of the established
Types l-3 if we simply expand the structural
definition,
there was a significant
group of sentences
which resist inclusion.
These are
worth reproducing
in full:
1 If you felt so strongly about it, why did you agree to do it?
2 If you had the blinks, you didnt go in to work.
(the blinks is a welders ailment)
3 Victor, if that was your attempt
to win my favour. you just blew it.
4 If her fantasy didnt succeed,
she died.
(in a discussion
of Rimsky-Korsakovs
Scheherzade)
5 If you didnt do that there, youd get cracks in the railing.
6 If you went in with a slight injury, hed wash it down and say, Now,
when you go home tonight,
bathe that in water and washing
soda.
7 If you didnt get a Queens Road tram, you had to change at Ash Street.
All of these are set in real past time and all of them involve a statement
about a condition
which used to prevail in the past. It is a curious aspect of

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David Maule

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the traditional
approach
that while we are quite happy to teach students
to
deal with a situation
which didnt happen:
If it had snowed, we would have
stayed at home, we somehow draw the line at equipping
them to deal with one
which did: If it snowed, we stayed at home/would stay at home. In some ways this
is comparable
to teaching
I go, I dont go, I didnt go but leaving out I went.
Incidentally,
we might note the ambiguity
of the would version,
as
reflected in numbers
5 and 6 above. While teaching students
that If + past
simple -- would + verb is used for unreal non-past
conditions,
we might also
point out that it can also be used for real past time conditions.
If I had time I
would visit the museum could apply to either. Again, some stress on the
importance
of context
might be useful here. One way of achieving
this
might be through
a sorting exercise of this type:
In each group

mark

whether

A or B can go before

C.

A
B

Ive got to mark all these

When I was in Stratford,

If I had time,

A
B

Its got nothing

to do with being frightened
of flying.
simple holiday at home.
I had more money to spare before I got married.

If I wanted

A
B

Theres absolutely
no chance of snow tomorrow.
Thats why were
going.
Quite often in winter the school bus couldnt get through.

If it snowed,

A
B

Theres no point in going on at me.

My youngest
son was always
having
homework.

I would

He thought
about teaching
but decided
really glad.
I dont think its possible he was a teacher,
car.

B
C

I would

go to the theatre.

to go abroad,

wed have

essays tonight.
Its a pity.
I had to work very hard.

I would

I just

want

go.

to stay at home.

trouble

with

his

maths

help him if I could.

If he was a teacher

he wouldnt

to become
Inspector.

be able to afford

a dentist.
Just

Im

look at his

a car like that.

The exercise is in fact somewhat

devious, the answer being both A and B
in every case. Students
trained in traditional
Type 2 conditionals
should
have no trouble joining A to C. However,
they might not recognize
the fact
that the real past B sentences
will also link up. The surprise of discovering
this may perhaps
help to clarify the idea that the past tense in English can
have unreal non-past
as well as real past reference.
We can only sympathize with the student who, having perhaps grasped the fact that English has
no future tense, has also to come to terms with the idea that the past tense is
not used only for past time).
Although
I did not come across one in my sample, it is also possible to
have double-past
time conditionals.
For instance:
If I had been silly, he had
been stupid.
The situation
seems rather complex
and perhaps
a diagram
would be
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helpful
should

at this point -I
am not,
be passed on to students.
NON-PAST
0

incidentally,

PAST
1

advocating

that

Figure

DOUBLE PAST
2

To move from the non-past

real situation,
either in terms of time or
reality, requires a past marker of some description.
This can be either a past
tense or the past form of a modal auxiliary. To make a further step requires
another
marker.
The perfect
fulfils this function.
In the diagram
the
number of markers required for each division of time or reality (UNREAL,
PAST, etc.) appears as a large number. The total number required by each
area (Real/Past,
etc.) appears
as a small number
in the box. The actual
markers
as used in the sentences
are italicized.
The total number
in each
clause will be found to conform to the small numbers
in the boxes. This
diagram
does not pretend
to cover all possible instances,
but may serve to
clarify things a little.
One final complication
is that it is quite possible to have a time-shift
in
the course of a sentence.
Instances
of these are comparatively
rare, but
might be puzzling
to the student.
The two that I found in the course of my
survey were as follows:
then
...what you were doing was unforgivable.
...if you do know more about art...
If you dont want Gina here, why didnt you say so?
In both of these, the move is simply from real non-past
time to real past,
i.e. from top left to top centre on the diagram.
Other combinations
are of
course possible.
In essence,
the second sentence
above is no more complicated
than: I
dont want Gina here but I didnt say so. If, as I strongly suspect, it would prove
more puzzling
to the average student,
we might ponder over how much of
this might be due to a lack of understanding
of the meaning and how much
to a vain attempt
to fit it into a set of memorized
categories.
Conclusion

Although
the traditional
presentation
of conditional
sentences
as belonging
to one of three types is valid as far as it goes, it would seem to be deficient in
two respects:
1 Too much emphasis
on the idea that
each type places unnecessary
restraints
and communicative
ability. This might
fectly valid alternative
forms. In the case

122

there is a standard
structure
for
on the students
natural curiosity
even lead to the rejection
of perof Type 1 conditionals,
the usual

David Maule

articles

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structure
presented
does not represent
be the most commonly
used form.

the bulk of usage

and may not even

2 Very little attention,

if any, is paid to equipping
the student
ability to talk about conditions
that used to apply in the past.
Received April 1987

References
Lewis, M. 1986. The English Verb: An Exploration of
Structure and Meaning. Hove: Language
Teaching

Publications.
Rinvolucri,

M. 1984. Grammar

Cambridge

University

Games.

Cambridge:

Simple
Simple
Simple
Simple

+
+
+
+

Unreal non-past (Type 2) (22)

Past Simple + would + verb
others

19
3

6
2
100

Total:

Present Simple
will + verb

other modals + verb

imperative

14
7
14
6
20

Real past (7)

4
2
1

Past Simple + Past Simple

Past Simple + would
Past Simple + had to

the

+ past)

Unreal past (Type 3) (8)

Past Perfect + would have + verb
others

Press.

Appendix
Summary of survey results
Real non-past (Type 1) (61)

Present
Present
Present
Present
others

Real mixed time (non-past

with

The author

David Maule has worked in Sierra Leone, Turkey, and

Yugoslavia and is now a lecturer in EFL/ESL
at
Stevenson College of Further Education, Edinburgh.
Since 1983 he has lectured on Grammar and Communication at the British Council Summer School at
Stirling University. He holds an MA in Linguistics and
ELT from the University of Leeds.

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Teaching conditionals

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