View Content #25768

Objectives: 

• Students will practice the use of the conditional and the simple present tense when making requests from a peer with varying levels of closeness.
• Students will adapt their choice of verb form based on their perceived social closeness to their conversational partner.

Level: Novice Mid

Mode: Interpersonal

Materials Needed: Buddies sentence strips, En mi clase (in my class) worksheet, school supplies props or images (optional)

Today’s Topic of the Week article mentions the use of the conditional to indicate politeness along with social distance. In Spanish, a student might use the more polite, distant form to ask a classmate for help, when they don’t really know the classmate well, especially if it’s more than a very casual request.

Example: ¿Me podrías prestar tu libro?          Could you lend me your book?

On the other hand, this form might feel off-putting to a close friend in class, where using a less polite but friendlier simple present tense form would more likely result in help.

Example: ¿Me puedes prestar tu lápiz?         Can you lend me your pencil?

Today’s activity helps students practice choosing which form to use based on how well they know their classmate. In order to avoid social embarrassment or isolation that may result from using actual classroom social networks, we start with a mixer activity to establish fictional social networks. From there, we move on to the core activity, in which students ask to borrow things from each other. Finally, we close with a reflective discussion to help students connect their experience during the activity to the grammatical and pragmatic distinction between present tense and conditional.

Part 1: Buddies

• Cut the buddies sentence strips printout into strips of three sentences each, and give one strip to each student. Tell students that they and their closest friends have the same taste in school supplies.
• Students will read their sentences to each other. If they share the same sentence, they respond with “Yo también” (“Me, too”); otherwise they respond with “Yo no” (“Not me”).
• Students need to find three good buddies who have the exact same school supplies, three classmates who don’t have any of the same school supplies, and three friends who have one or two school supplies in common with them, and write their names on the En mi clase worksheet.

Note: The set of sentence strips is enough for 16 students. For larger classes, make two or three copies of each strip. You may want to subdivide a large class into two subgroups to limit student interactions to the same group of ~16 in each part of the lesson.

Part 2: Borrowing

• Remind students that they would use “¿Me puedes prestar...” with a buen amigo/buena amiga (good friend) from their list, but ¿Me podrías prestar...? with a compañero/a de clase (classmate) from their list. With amigos (friends, but not best buddies), they could use either form, depending on how polite or chummy they want to sound in order to get what they want to borrow.
• Students will circulate around and ask to borrow other students’ actual classroom items, such as books, paper, and pencils. If their partner feels they are too chummy or too formal given their relationship based on the previous step, they should refuse to lend the item.

Note: If you are concerned that students won’t feel safe lending their possessions to classmates, you can also print out pictures of school supplies and give sets of cards to each student, or distribute your own set of classroom props. You can find images to print on websites such as this one: https://www.eslgamesplus.com/school-supplies-flashcards/.

Part 3: Reflection

As a whole class, debrief the activity:

• Who was able to borrow the most items? What was the secret to their success?
• Did anyone refuse to lend an item because their classmate was being too chummy? Did anyone refuse to lend an item because their buddy was being too formal?
• When asking an amigo/a for something especially valuable, did it seem better to use the present tense or the conditional? (Answers are likely to vary depending on each individual’s preference in these situations.)
• What are some different ways to ask to borrow things in English, depending on how friendly or polite you want to be? (Answers may include “can” vs. “could,” the use of “please,” and direct commands such as “give me”.)

Ask students to return all items to their original, actual owners.