The concept behind "would" has always been difficult for my students to grasp. They can memorize the rules of the second conditional well enough, but the hypothetical aspect always seems to be puzzling.

The following activity has clarified the topic greatly, amid a lot of laughter.

I presented two pictures of remote places, Antarctica and Namibia. I wrote on the board: If you were there…

The first question was:" …what would you feel?"  That seemed a reasonable question to the pupils. With some we wrote very simple answers relating to each photo (I would feel cold) others wrote more sophisticated sentences.

But then I asked them what would they smell. Some of the students were shocked! Nobody had ever talked about smells during lessons! I suggested options such as "dead fish" and "camel poo" and we all laughed. It IS true; by the way, the smell of all those adorable penguins in huge colonies is pretty fierce!! None of them knew the word "sweat" and some jumped to conclusions and read it as "sweet" so that lead to a productive discussion.

By the time we got to the question "What would you hear?" the aspect of imagination had sunk in. Some of my students do hear sounds (cochlear implants) but even the ones who don't could think about noises such as the motorboat's engine.

You can find the link to download the lesson on my Reading Pictures page on my class website.

Enjoy!