1.

Options tree
Students tell their partners about big decisions they have made in
their life, and then decide with their partner how their life would have
branched off from where it went if any of those decisions had gone
the other way, drawing them on the page like an upside down tree.
To add more fun, at some point they can pass their Options Trees to
another group to have their imaginary lives extended, usually to their
amusement when they find out what others have decided such as
becoming a famous ballet dancer.

2. Decision making stories

Students do one of those making decision stories where you have to
turn to a particular page or card depending on what decisions you
make (If you want to enter the dark doorway turn to page 17, if you
want to go back to the entrance hall turn back to page 7), such as
the ones available at the back of some of the Headway teachers
books. When they have finished and found out their fate, they can
ask the teacher or anyone else with access to the whole thing what
would have happened if they had made different decisions.

3. Third conditional sentence completion guessing game

Students complete interesting third conditional sentence stems such
as If I had been born with webbed feet or If I had/ hadnt been an
only child. They then read out one of their sentence completions
without the original sentence stem, and other people guess which
sentence stems that was a completion of. To make it more
challenging, you can give different students different sentence stems
to complete, so that their partners must guess the original sentence
stem without being able to see it.

4. Sentence starters completion guessing game

In this variation of the game above, students are given the endings of
third conditional sentences such as I would have been happier or I
would have been able to date a supermodel, complete the
beginnings of the sentences to make them true for themselves and
then read them out for their partners to guessing which endings they
match. This can be mixed with the idea above by giving student As
sentence stems and student Bs sentence endings to complete.

5. Third conditional sentence guessing game

In this variation on or extension of the activities above, students
make up their own third conditional sentences and tell their partner
only half of the sentence they have written. Their partner should then
try to guess what the half of the sentence they havent been told
says, getting hints until they get it exactly right.

6. Options tree guessing

You can combine the ideas of an Options Tree and the sentence
guessing games above by a student drawing their own Options Tree,
telling their partner what the consequences (positive or negative) of
making one of the decisions differently would have been without
showing them the Options Tree or telling them which decision they
are talking about, then their partner tries to guess which decision
they mean.

7. Reality guessing
Students write some real things they did in the past (e.g. I was a
spotty teenager) and some ideas of what could have happened if
things had gone differently (e.g. If I had been born with
superpowers I would have used them to pass my university entrance
exams). They then tell their partner a few words from one of those
sentences, but with the grammar stripped out (spotty teenager or
pass university entrance exams). Their partner then guesses
whether that was a real thing or not and then try to guess the whole
sentence.

8. Past consequence chains

Students write the possible consequences of taking a different action
in their past, e.g. If I hadnt gone to university, I would have stayed
on my uncles farm. They then pass that to the next person, and
they put a further consequence of that action, e.g. If you had stayed
on your uncles farm, you would have been bored. They then
continue passing and writing the consequences until it gets back to
the original person for them to read, usually with the predicted
consequences causing considerable surprise! You can add to the
strangeness and hence amusement of the sentences produced by
getting students to fold the paper so they can only see one stage
above when they write their consequence.

9. Accusations competition
Students are told they were both involved in something bad such as
getting lost on the way to a party, then take turns accusing the other
person of being at fault, e.g. If you had brought the map, we
wouldnt have got lost, Well, if you had tidied the room at the
weekend as you promised, I would have been able to find the map,
Well, anyway, if you had bought a satellite navigation system like I
suggested, losing the map wouldnt have been such a problem etc.

10. Ease my regrets

Students tell their partners their regrets, and their partners tell them
what worse things would have happened if they had done those
things, e.g. I wish I had studied more at school. If I had studied
more at school, I could have become a doctor, Dont worry. If you
had become a doctor, you would have died of an exotic disease you
caught from one of your patients.

11. Third conditional bluff

One student says a true third or mixed conditional sentence for them,
e.g. If had had a bigger lunch, I wouldnt be so hungry now. Their
partner must say that they actually did that thing and tell them what
the consequences were, e.g. I had a big lunch and thats why Im so
sleepy now. The person who made the original conditional sentence
then has to guess whether the response was true or not, i.e. whether
their partner did really do that thing. The game becomes even more
fun when students realise they can always guess if their partner has
to try and respond to If I had been born with three eyes

12. Annoying instructions

Students try to do something they are likely to fail at first time such
as programme a video recorder (maybe with some of the labels on
the buttons covered) or do a puzzle. When they have completed their
first attempt, the person who knows how to do it or has been given
instructions on how to do it tells them where they went wrong, e.g.
If you hadnt pressed the second button on the right, everything
would have worked fine or If you had put the square piece in before
the circle, then the triangle would have fitted. All advice given must
be in the third conditional, and the person trying to do it cannot ask
questions. They can then try to do it again, and receive the same
kind of advice if they fail, over and over until they finally succeed.

13. Third conditional Answer Me!

Students are given some very general endings of third conditional
sentences such as I would have felt sad or My mother would have
been proud of me. They have to ask third conditional questions to
their partner to get exactly those responses from them to discard the
card and get one point, e.g. How would you have felt if our teacher
had died just before this class? or How would you mother have felt
if you had won a medal in the army?. If they get different responses
(e.g. I wouldve been glad that the test was cancelled), then they
have to wait until their next turn and try again with a different
question.

14. Third conditionals with everything

Students must answer every question they are asked with a third or
mixed conditional sentence, e.g. What did you have for dinner? with
If I had had dinner, I wouldnt have had time to come to class, so
nothing. or How often do you go swimming? with If I hadnt been
victim of a shark attack, I would probably still go twice a week. Note
that this activity is challenging even for native speakers, and might
be better done as a writing task rather than a speaking one and with
students working in teams to come up with the responses.

15. Mr Bean
Give them the sentence endings to third conditional sentences
connected to places where clumsy or idiotic comedy characters such
as Mr Bean or Inspector Clousseau mess up, e.g. he wouldnt have
got his head stuck in a turkey. When students think they have seen
enough of the video to be able to make the correct first part of the
sentence (often predicting the reasons for it long before they see it
happen), they shout Stop! and say the whole sentence. Watch up to
when that mess up happens, then reward points.