Article · 1988
‘Sorry, but if he comes, I go’: teaching conditionals
ELT Journal, volume 42, issue 2 (April 1988), pages 117–123. Oxford University Press.
The article looks at how narrow the range of conditional sentences usually taught to learners of English is, and how far that picture is from the conditionals people actually use. It describes a case where the narrow classroom model could get in the way of a learner’s natural progress, and, from a small sample of real language, argues that the textbook patterns cover only part of what speakers do with “if”. Coursebooks and teaching grammars of the time, it notes, left a wide area of conditional meaning almost untouched. [5]
The article is still part of the discussion. Research on how English conditionals should be taught has gone on citing it for more than thirty years:
- Topal & Demirezen — Hacettepe University Journal of Education (Turkey), 2025
- Graham Burton, “Rehabilitating the ELT conditional system” — ELT Journal, 2021
- Roger Berry, “Grammar myths” — Language Awareness, 2014
- Mark Jones & Tim Waller, “If only it were true: the problem with the four conditionals” — ELT Journal, 2010
At the time of writing, the author’s note in the journal recorded that he had taught in Sierra Leone, Turkey and Yugoslavia, was a lecturer at Stevenson College of Further Education in Edinburgh, taught at the British Council Summer School at Stirling University, and held an MA in Linguistics and ELT from the University of Leeds.