Teaching English conditionals: Systemic review of modern methodological approaches and teaching techniques.

Abstract

English grammar has always caused certain difficulties for students of secondary and higher educational establishments. Some grammatical phenomena, such as conditional sentences, are highlighted within certain scientific circles, based on various scientific approaches. It arouses scientific interest in their studying and applying in one’s own pedagogical experience. Accordingly, such multifacetedness determines the choice of a method of clarifying grammatical material on the part of the teacher, which, of course, causes a number of questions. In order to outline the teaching-learning algorithm of the topic “English Conditionals” in a certain way, the article attempts to describe the methodological approaches and teaching techniques used by foreign teachers when working with ESL students. It is noted that nowadays English teachers use different ways of presenting English conditional sentences, for example, a comprehensive listing of possible combinations of an if-clause and a result-clause; a tabular method of summarizing and contrasting the subjunctive forms in tables; the outlining of only three most common types of English conditionals, namely, the predictive, hypothetical and counterfactual conditionals. The following methodological approaches are described in detail in the paper: contrastive analysis, probability, deductive, inductive, and communicative approaches. Also, the paper offers an overview of teaching techniques that are focused on the performance of certain types of activities and tasks on the topic “English Conditionals”: Game based learning (GBL), the PPP procedure (Presentation-Practice-Production), Picture Sequences, and teaching conditionals by means of songs.