Presidential Campaign

Setup

Introduce the topic by asking the class what problems there are in their city/country/the world. How could we solve those problems?

Now, ask them to imagine they were the ‘president’ of their country/the world. They have the power to make these changes. What would they do?

Note: It is useful to teach the vocabulary word ‘policies’ here.

Activity

1. The students come up with five or ten of their top policies. These policies should be written in the second conditional (e.g. If I were president I would clean the oceans).
2. When the students finish their sentences, they take turns presenting them to the class.
3. At the end, the class can vote for who they want to be president (based on their policies!).

Alternatively, a great way to extend this activity is to do the Presidential Speech activity when the students have finished writing their sentences.

Target Language

Use the Presidential Campaign ESL activity to practise the second conditional with intermediate students. As the sentences are of a set format, it can be used in the early stages of learning the grammar.

Explain that here we are using the second conditional because we’re imagining a very unlikely situation.

You could also use this activity as part of a class on politics. If this is the case, ask the students to include some relevant/learned vocabulary in their policies.