Skype & Third Conditional," if the Connection Had Been Better,..."

Thursday 16^th October, 2014

Hello everybody!

So, we were looking forward to our Skype sessions but …

It is true that we started with some technical problems. The connection was cut off (interrupted) at times what made difficult to follow the conversation. Our teacher Oksana suggested turning the video off in order to get better sound quality. And we did… And that disappointed you because most of the fun was to see what the other people were like, wasn’t it?

These are my views:

It was difficult to follow the conversation, not only because of the problems with the sound but also because you didn’t stop giggling (continuous laughter) and talking. That made difficult for the person speaking to understand the other person. Next time, please try to be quiet and respect your classmates. I told you to be polite and I could hear a not very nice word; and the worst part is that they could hear it too…

There was also a positive side to it. Some of you were able to improvise when you ran out of questions (the questions finished).  When one of the Turkish students said that it was difficult for her to pronounce the name Jorge, it was very clever of you to tell her to call you George.

The objective of these chats is learning about the other people’s culture and lifestyle, as well as practising our English. What did you learn about our Turkish friends?

In a conversation we have to listen to the things the others tell us. We have to interact, that is, asking questions, giving time to answer them, listen to what they tell us, asking to repeat if we don’t understand, etc.

I’m sure next time it’ll be much better!

I’d like to know your opinions. What do you think about it?

This took up the first part of our class.

In the second half, we listened to a couple (two) of stories about good and /or bad luck.

 We used the third conditional, also called impossible conditional.

The first story was about a British guy who went to work to Australia. After six months there he decided to pay a visit to his girlfriend in England. The thing was that she had the same idea. She decided to visit him in Australia. As it was a surprise, nobody said anything. Problem was that both made the journey on exactly the same day so they missed each other! Bad luck? Lack of planning? This is why I don’t like surprises!

Ian, the Englishman, said, “If one of us had been at home, we would have met.”

In the second story, a lady was flying to the USA with her daughter. They were going to her daughter’s wedding. On the plane, the lady started to feel bad. She didn’t say anything. But when she got worse, she realized that she was having a heart attack. The flight attendant asked if there was a doctor on the plane and… there were 12! All of them cardiologists! They were going to the USA to a conference. Good luck? Coincidence?

The lady got over the attack (recuperated) and said, “If those doctors hadn’t been on the plane, I would have died!”

And we practiced pronunciation. In spoken English, we pronounce it like this:

If those doctors hadn’t been on the plane, I would’ve died.

“If one of us had been at home, we would’ve met.”

We’ll continue practising this!

 Listening: Third Conditional

For homework: write a story of good or bad luck using 3^rd conditional. For example:

“Last Saturday I was invited to a party but I didn’t go. If I had been to the party, I would have met a famous American actor. If I had met that actor,  …”

As we didn’t have for our games, I’ve decided to give you a general mark of 6 for your attempt at Skype!

GAME 3

Player 1	6
Player 2	6
Player 3	6
Player 4	6
Player 5	6
Player 6	6
Player 7	6

Have a nice week!

See you on Thursday!

Pilar, Óscar, enjoy your school trip! See you in two weeks’ time!