Universite d’antananarivo ecole normale superieure

1.2.2- Conceptual value of conditional sentences in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching

The conditionals pose one of the most serious problems encountered by teachers of English, especially EFL teachers like in Madagascar. This is because conditional sentences are syntactically more complex than many other structures. Moreover, the semantics of all the different types of conditional sentences are subtle and difficult to understand. Therefore, EFL students need a good grasp of the English tense-aspect system so that they can cope with the full range of conditional sentences in English (Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman, 1999). The objective of teaching conditional sentences is that students will be able to express hypothesis by using if clauses. Thereby, they will master conditionals syntactically, semantically, and in realistic contexts.

In addition to the various conditional forms, the time-tense relationship can also be confusing to EFL learners. As Norris (2003) sees it, conditionals require coordination of verb forms in both the if and result clauses. This is complicated by the fact that verb forms in conditional sentences often do not retain their normal references to time.

Eg: (1)- If it rains, we will stay home.
Future reference: It is only a prediction.
(2)- If I had a helicopter, I would visit many famous cities.
Present reference: But I do not have a helicopter.
(3)- Ben would have passed his exam if he had worked hard.
Past reference: But Ben did not work hard, so he did not pass his exam.

In English conditionals, the tense of the verb in the if-clause is always backshifted. In sentence (1), the present “rains” is used to refer to the future. So if it rains (in a future time), we will stay home. In sentence (2), the past “had” has nothing to do with any past event. It refers to the time when the speaking occurs. It is obvious that the speaker (I) does not have a helicopter at the moment of speaking, so he uses “had” to indicate its counterfactuality. The past perfect in sentence (3) is in fact a reference to the past. It is clear that Ben did not work hard, so he did not pass his exam.

In short, the present tense “rains” is used to refer to the future time, the past “had” to impossibility in the present, and the past perfect “had rained” is used to indicate contrary-to- fact events that did not happen in the past. That backshifting of verb tenses makes conditionals utterly confusing for ESL learners.