Conditional Activities – Easy Ways to Practise ESL Conditionals

These conditional activities offer clear, simple ways to introduce and practise the first, second, third, and mixed conditional forms in the TEFL classroom. Many of them work well as speaking prompts, grammar reinforcement, or fun warmers with a bit of imagination.

First Conditional Activities

Superstitions

This matching exercise is a great way to introduce the first conditional through quirky, real-world examples. Students match superstitions (e.g. breaking a mirror, walking under a ladder) with possible consequences.

If you break a mirror, you’ll have seven years of bad luck.

Afterwards, invite students to share other superstitions they know, or invent their own. Works well as a lead-in to the structure.

Murphy’s Law

This is a simple activity for quickly reviewing the first conditional. Give each student a copy of this worksheet. After going through the first couple of examples as a class, have students alone or in pairs come up with ideas for the other situations.

If you drop a slice of toast, it’ll land butter-side down.

Second Conditional Activities

What Would You Wear?

Use situational prompts to introduce the second conditional in a natural way. Students ask each other questions like:

What would you wear if you were going to a wedding?
What would you wear if you worked outdoors in winter?

It’s a low-pressure way to build fluency around “would” and “if.”

Conversation Questions

A set of conversation questions for practising the second conditional.

Second Conditional Class Survey

This is a survey aimed at younger learners. Students must piece together their question and then collect their classmate’s answers. The results can be shared and discussed at the end of the activity.

Complete the Sentence

Give each student a copy of the worksheet and ask students to complete some or all of the sentences. Make sure they put their name on the paper. Now, collect the papers and either redistribute them or if the handwriting is not so clear then read out the answers yourself. Students have to guess from the completed sentences whose answers are being read.

Third and Mixed Conditionals

Regrets Photo Set

Use this photo slideshow for practising the third conditional to elicit sentences related to regrets.

I hadn’t eaten so much

I wish I had read the instructions.

Split Universe

This is another simple activity to demonstrate the third conditional form.

Tell the students that you are going to roll a dice and if the result is an even number then you will give everyone a sweet (for example).

Roll the dice and if the number is even, then give out the sweets. If it’s odd then shrug your shoulders and take a sweet for yourself.

Elicit from the students what the situation would be if the other result had occurred.

if you had rolled a three, we would all have sweets.

Maybe you can develop this activity into other interesting areas, let me know in the comments if you have any ideas.

Alternative Timeline

Draw a line on the board intersected with three or four nodes. Label each node with the life event that took place there.

For each event explain what happened and write a sentence on the board of what might have happened in an alternate timeline if things had gone differently.

If I hadn’t passed my A levels, I wouldn’t have gone to university in Manchester.

If I hadn’t applied for that job, I would probably still be working in a bank.

If I hadn’t gone to that party, I wouldn’t have met my partner.

Ask students to draw their own timelines and then in small groups ask about each other’s timelines and possible branching events.

Online Conditional Activities

You can find online conditional exercises and activities at our online-focused site LearnHip.com.