Universite d’antananarivo ecole normale superieure

0.3- Scope and limitations of the work

Though the lessons on conditional sentences are included in the syllabus of the three levels (seconde, première, and terminales) in Malagasy lycées, we will only focus our research on the teaching of conditional sentences in “première” and “terminale” classes because of time constraint for making this research. Students in “seconde” class deal with first and second conditionals when the school year is going to end, yet we could not wait for the end of the school year. Moreover, we found out during our investigation that some teachers in one lycée do not teach conditionals in “seconde” class. Furthermore, we intended to test whether it is feasible to teach all the conditional types in the Malagasy lycée syllabus (i.e, first, second, and third conditionals) by applying communicative grammar, so we have chosen “première” and “terminale” classes. It is worth mentioning that normally, first and second conditionals should be revised but not presented any more in these two class levels. Nonetheless, we decided to deal with the presentation of the three major types of English conditionals so as to adapt the lessons for those who did not learn conditionals in “seconde” class. In spite of this scope, our

suggestions for improvement are also available for the teaching of conditional sentences in “seconde” class.

In order to have a complete view of the teaching of conditional sentences, we should investigate all the lycées in different regions of Madagascar, but due to time and financial constraints, we have only investigated some lycées and private schools in Antananarivo for this study.