Q re national curriculum - conditional tense English language

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Any experts on the national curriculum around? I have been looking at various sites and it seems that the conditional tense is not taught in years reception - year 13?

By conditional tense I mean the conjugated past and present conditional for verbs, for example would have, could have etc.

I have also noticed quite a lot about zero conditional, first conditional, second conditional etc in relation to teaching English as a second language. I was taught formal grammar which I am fairly sure did not include these ways of categorising the conditional tense, we learned the straightforward conjugated past and present conditional for verbs. Are these ways of categorising just taught to people learning English as a second language, and if so why?

Thank you very much!

The poster isn't correct according to the academic sources I have looked at. Conditional is a tense and a mood. The poster thought it was an "aspect" only - aspect is a quality of verbs which indicates whether the verb is continuous, completed, both of those, or neither.

According to the academic sources I have seen, English does have a future tense.

Where does all your information come from?

Applying grammar norms based on highly inflected languages to English is not always helpful. I’ve had French university students complain we weren’t teaching enough conjugation in English class. But there’s not much conjugation to be done in English so it’s not a helpful way to think about English grammar.

I wouldn’t have said conditionals were tenses?

in EFL We teach the six (or eight) tenses as:

present simple (I play)
present continuous (I am
playing)
present perfect (I have played)
past simple (I played
past continuous (I was playing)
past perfect (I had played)
and then the two perfect continuous (I have been playing, I had been playing).

would and will are modal auxiliary verbs, not tenses. “Would” for example can be used for conditionals, describing past habits (like when I was young I would always eat my vegetables) and speculation “it would have been horrible to give birth without gas and air”

It makes my ears ache when I hear it. It’s perhaps because people feel they have to ‘match’ the second clause of the sentence, ‘If I would have finished earlier, I would have gone for a run.’

I’ve only heard this in the last five or ten years.

It depends on your definition of tense.
If tense = grammar construction involving verb inflection, used to express time or mood or aspect, then English does not have have a future tense.

if you look at French, German or Spanish, you conjugate the verb to make it future, eg: Que será (from the verb ser)

In English, you can’t do this. You can use an auxiliary verb, such as “will” but is this making a tense? For example using the auxiliary “would” to make a past doesn’t mean that it’s a past tense. (I would play tennis each Saturday).

You can use the present continuous (I am
meeting Jen tomorrow), the present simple (my exam is next week) or the present continuous of the verb “go” followed by a to+infinitive (I’m going to cook). We don’t change our verbs to a future form in the way other European languages do.

There’s two ways of teaching this. Either as ´tenses’ or as constructions combining tense and aspect.
So then you only have two tenses plus zero aspect, continuous aspect and perfect aspect and they combine to make 8 different constructions

Ooh @SnapCrackleandStop i like that even more :-) Only two.

Me too. Depends what age/language background you’re teaching but with French L1 teen/adult learners I find it helps break the assumption that the equivalent English ´tense’ can be used in all the same situations as their L1 tense. English present perfect and French ´passé composé’ are in no way equivalent for example. And I’m forever explaining that we mostly use ´will’ to make promises or proposals and it’s not just a case of future time = use ´will’.

I do from age 6-adult C2 so I’m fascinated by different approaches!

Today we looked at using “will” in the present, eg: “oh who is that knocking at the door? It’ll be the postman”

Chill out OP and read some David Crystal. The challenge/fun of English is that it has more syntax than grammar. I think you are hung up on things being ‘right’ whereas most English grammar is up for debate. Does it matter if there is technically a future tense or not? Unlike in French you can’t really get it wrong. I will eat cake/I’m going to eat cake/ I’m eating cake later. There’s no conjugation required and the distinction between when each construction is used is learnt intuitively. In tefl terms you would say ‘I will’ is for spontaneous decisions, ‘I’m going to’ is for a plan ‘I’m eating cake’ is for diarised Items but I could certainly critique that.

And for OP - I’m a linguist. We forget sometimes that grammar rules are just observations about how languages function. Then we take the prestige varieties and teach those grammar rules to 2nd language learners and sometimes to native speakers too as though language is supposed to follow the rules and not the other way around. There are multiple ways of describing grammar. When you try to make a system that works for every language it all gets a bit too abstract for teaching purposes. Searching for the ´correct’ answer to whether English has a future tense is a bit pointless. It depends on why you want to know and what you want to do with the answer.

It means that as long as you understood them, it doesn't matter if what someone says (or writes) is grammatically incorrect.

Love this example. This thread is a real throwback to when I taught elf! Oh the fun grammar conversations we had in the staffroom ahahah. I always felt native speakers were at a disadvantage because you get sidetracked so easily into things most learns don’t need to know. I tried to explain all the ways to use ‘just’ once. Nightmare.

It’s learnt intuitively if you grow up hearing it all the time. Unlike French you can mostly hear the different grammatical constructions, although ´would of’ is the classic counter example. I do think think there’s value in teaching grammar to teen or adult 2nd language learners. It can be an efficient short cut.

There are multiple ways of describing grammar. When you try to make a system that works for every language it all gets a bit too abstract for teaching purposes.

Completely agree with @SnapCrackleandStop - this is what I meant when I said we all subscribe to different schools of thought but Snap has summed up my opinion far better! I am also a linguist OP as I know you asked about my academic background. Ultimately I could find you 100 academic sources explaining there’s only two tenses in English, you could in turn find me several which argue with this definition of the word tense and suggest there are more. That’s why I’ve always loved linguistics!

It's a mood.

Hello fellow linguist!
And OP, to this I just want to add; type ´universal grammar’ into google scholar at your peril. It always gave me a headache after about 10minutes.

Oh yes I should have said it’s learnt intuitively in an English language environment. Having seen how much grammar French and Czech high school students have to do I certainly think we have it easy learning English as we can pick it up mostly easily. I think generally English speakers get the construction of conditionals right without it ever being taught, the ‘would of’ is a pretty understandable mistake imo. You don’t generally hear people saying eg ‘if I have time I’d go to the shop’. Juts referring back to OPs examples I don’t think native speakers get conditionals wrong.

Yes I definitely agree. Although younger primary school kids might come out with some interesting variations. There’s definitely some variation in how they’re used in different dialects. I’m pretty sure ´I could care less’ and ´I couldn’t care less’ mean the same thing, for example.

I teach foreign languages to adults and I can assure you the vast majority are learning many of the grammatical terms for the first time when they learn a foreign language.
Look at the contents page of any self study book.... Even the beginner books or the easy learning books use terminology that many adults have never heard of.

Ah I taught conditionals only today - to adults learning English.

We looked at zero, 1st and mainly 2nd but my fav is 3rd (which is taught later on - past often used for regret: If I had studied harder, I would have gone to uni, really complex structure) as students from countries like Vietnam and Thailand have no such thing and really struggle to understand the concept of looking back and saying that something did not happen. We use this structure a lot in English!

@SnapCrackleandStop tangent but on the subject of region variations - the Scottish (Lothian specific - I don’t know) - ‘it needs done’ always threw me. Along with my absolute favourite- I am’nt. unfortunately I’m not Scottish enough to say I am’nt and get away with it.

Ooh that’s a lovely construction. I like teaching phonetics and explaining the reason my English learners never seem to hear @mizu ’s 3rdconditional is that vowel reduction turns it into ´If I’da known, I wouldna done it’ . You’ll have to imagine the IPA symbols on mumsnet.

Amn't I? makes a lot more sense in many ways than aren't I. I was always told I was very well spoken but it wasn't until I moved away for university that I found out 'needs done' is dialectal. Is 'needs doing' also non-standard (as opposed to 'needs to be done')? It sounds so odd to me!