Sep 20, 2008

Sex and the City - 3rd Conditional - Unreal Past Events

This is a great scene full of unfortunate happenings. The students will love the segment and have a great opportunity to practice the 3rd conditional, unreal past events, in a contextualized manner. Tell me if you like it by posting a comment, please.


Carrie and Big

Write True or False next to each of the statements below according to the information presented in the movie segment.

1) The little girl hid Carrie's cell phone. ( )
Carrie didn't receive any calls. ( )

2)Carrie didn't know where her phone was. ( )
Carrie didn’t receive Big’s messages and phone calls. ( )


3) Big wasn’t confident enough to walk into church all by himself. ( )
Big quit getting married. ( )


4) Big took too long to apologize. ( )
Carrie hit him with her wedding bouquet. ( )


5) Carrie’s friend didn’t let Big explain himself. ( )
Carrie went home in a state of shock. ( )

6) Carrie and Big didn't get married. ( )
They both had a horrible afternoon. ( )


Now fill in the blanks of the sentences saying how things would have been different if the characters had acted differently. Use the 3rd conditional.

Ex:
1) If the little girl hadn't hidden (hide) Carrie's cell phone, she would have received (receive) Big's calls.
2) If Carrie ____________(know) where her phone was, she ___________(receive) Big’s messages.

3) If Big ________________ (be) confident enough to walk into church all by himself, He ______________ (quit) getting married.

4) If Big ________________ (take) too long to apologize, Carrie ____________ (hit) him with the wedding bouquet.

5) If Carrie’s friend ______________ (let) Big explain himself, Carrie _______________ (go) home in a state of shock.
6) If Carrie and Big _______________ (get) married, they ___________________ (go) through a horrible afternoon.

Talk to a partner and discuss the following questions:

1) What would you have done if you were in Carrie’s shoes?

2) Who was right? Why?

3) How could the situation been prevented from happening?

How to prepare your own video activity:

- Select a scene in which the characters make wrong decisions with several undesired consequences.

- Prepare a set of sentences for students to write T or F, according to what they see in the segment.

- If all the sentences are true, it will be easier for the students to understand the context and write accurate sentences.

- The first sentence should be the cause and the second one the consequence.

- The students rewrite the sentences using the 3rd conditional.

- Remind the students that the sentences have to make perfect sense.

- Prepare some discussion questions about how they would react to the situations presented in the segment.

WORKSHEET


MOVIE SEGMENT DOWNLOAD - SEX AND THE CITY

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for that.

Anonymous said...

Wonderful. I think this will be very useful for my students. I'm just working with Third Conditional... Go on please!

Solymar said...

Thanks for sharing this with us. I find this very useful and I'm sure my students will enjoy it.

Unknown said...

I've found this site highly useful and interesting. So have the students. Thank you very much for sharing your great ideas with 'the world'.

Mariana from Uruguay

Claudio Azevedo said...

Thanks Mariana and Lina. It's really motivating to hear that. It makes me believe it is worth doing it. See you.

Anonymous said...

Maria Elena said

It's just great, I'm working with third conditional now and I'd like to use your video segment. How canI download it?

Claudio Azevedo said...

Hi Maria Elena, Thanks. You can download the videos with real player. Download the free version at www.realplayer.com. After you install it, all you'll have to do is to scroll the mouse over the screen and you'll be automatically offered the choice to download it. That's how I download youtube videos, and you can do it here too. Unfortunately blogger does not allow fullscreening, sorry, but downloading the segment is easy. Let me know if you managed. See you.

Anonymous said...

I love Sex and the CIty and so do many of my students so I´m sure they´ll enjoy working on conditional 3 with this great material!!! THanks for sharing :)

Claudio Azevedo said...

You're welcome. Nothing is as quite as good as sharing and receiving this sort of feedback. See you around.

Elizabeth said...

Claudio, thank you very much! Your site is marvelous) I will definitely use your ideas and tips with my students!

Claudio Azevedo said...

Thanks a lot! I'm glad you will be visiting it often.

Gabriela Diaz Tagle said...

I cannot believe it. After having argued with my mates about this proposal, TO INCLUDE VIDEOS IN GRAMMAR, i came across this wonderful site. I am really grateful

Morgan said...

Thank you for the video. i is really en richening to work with this type of exc. Even motivating.

Claudio Azevedo said...

Well, I have been doing this for ages. Remember, follow your intuition. Make good use of the site. See you.

Unknown said...

very well chosen scene for condit3.
To me this is one of the most complex structures in the English language. Will be sending you feedback after i've used it in class.Thanks for your contributions!
Marianela from Argentina

Claudio Azevedo said...

I really hope it works. I agree with you. This grammar point depends a lot on contextualization and the segment provides that. See you.

Diana said...

Claudio, I'm amazed how creative you are. Thanks for sharing your ideas. I really like working with video activities in my class. You will inspire me. I'm trying to create some video activities for my groups because I believe that videos are good tolls to teach grammar. Thanks again.

Claudio Azevedo said...

Thanks, Diana. I think you should share your activities too. See you.

Anonymous said...

Thanks a million. That was fun and worked really nicely with my students

Anonymous said...

Excellent activity, excellent blog.

Thanks a lot for sharing.

Emontane said...

I cannot download the clip although I have real player installed. I get this message: "el clip no se puede descargar de este sitio". But I can download videos from Youtube without any problem. Can somebody please tell me if the video is in Youtube (I haven't found it...)

Claudio Azevedo said...

Check out the link at the end of the post. You can download it straight from my wiki. Let me know if you managed. See you.

emontane said...

It worked! Thanks!

Karolina said...

Mr Claudio - thank you very, very much for all these videos and activities! They are really great, they always work and my students love them. I am so grateful to you for letting us download and use them for free! Thank you very much :)

Claudio Azevedo said...

Great to hear that. See you around.