All of us enjoy speculating about the past, present, and future. Once your students are confident using conditionals, why not take it a step further and introduce them to the mixed conditional, which combines the past with the present, with a focus on giving medical advice.
Serendipitously, I found myself teaching the conditionals wish + Past Simple and wish + Past Perfect to a few private students at the same time. This led me to cover the mixed conditional and create a lesson plan for it, which I believe should be relatively easy to understand at this point. Since two of those students are doctors, I thought I could focus on providing medical advice about the past and how it impacts the future.
If you believe your students could benefit from reviewing the second and third conditionals, as well as learning about the mixed conditional, you can access the presentation and the accompanying worksheet with teacher’s notes at the end of this post.
Let’s start the class by having students discuss three questions in pairs. The questions are related to receiving and following doctor’s orders. Encourage students to think about times when they were sceptical of medical advice and chose not to comply with their doctor’s orders.
Let’s review the second and third conditionals by observing a doctor speaking to a patient. In the first scenario, the doctor discusses the hypothetical present or future using the second conditional: If you exercised regularly, you’d be healthier. Contrasting this, in the second scenario, the doctor refers to a hypothetical past using the third conditional: If you’d exercised regularly, you’d have been healthier. To ensure students comprehend the conditionals, we will review their structure and usage and complete a grammar task by filling in the gaps with appropriate structures. It’s important to note that there can be multiple correct answers with variations in meaning.
Start the grammar portion of the class by showing students a scenario of a doctor speaking to a patient. In this scenario, the doctor should use conditional sentences to discuss past conditions with present results and present conditions with past results. Let the students know that this type of conditional sentence is called a mixed conditional, and reassure them that this is the last type of conditional they will need to learn. As before, have the students analyse the structure of both types of sentences and discuss the uses of each one.
Encourage students to consider the use and structure of the mixed conditional by completing the guided grammar activity. It would be helpful to review the answers together, and if students struggle to visualize the situations, they can be drawn on a timeline. It’s also worth noting that the mixed conditional with the condition in the past and the result in the present is more commonly used.
After students have become confident with the mixed conditional and its uses, have them examine medical problems and doctors’ advice, obtained from 30 healthy habits from every type of doctor published by Children’s Hospital of Orange County. Students work individually and match the problems to the medical solutions. Then, check the answers by putting students into pairs and allowing them to present the answers using the mixed conditional. For example, they could say, If you had used compression socks, your legs wouldn’t have been swollen.
The final activity requires students to create their own mixed conditional sentences based on past advice and present results for three different patients. Students work in pairs or small groups and come up with three mixed conditional sentences for each patient. Below is an example of a patient describing her health problem.
I’ve been experiencing headaches and dizziness lately. My blood pressure is very high. I haven’t been exercising and my diet is full of salty foods. I also smoke regularly.
The possible answers could be as follows: If you had started exercising regularly last year, you would feel much better now. If you had reduced your salt intake earlier, your blood pressure would be lower now. If you had quit smoking six months ago, your symptoms would be less severe now.
If you have some free time at the end of the class, you could discuss the ethical implications of giving advice based on past events to patients and consider whether there is any benefit in doing so. You could also think about how patients may feel when receiving advice about the past, which cannot be changed.
Whether you teach English to medical professionals or need a class to explain mixed conditionals, take a look and download the presentation and the worksheet by clicking the links below.
