Second Conditional Activities: Comparing Countries

We have already seen an activity for second conditional with Norah Jones, and I'd also touched on the subject of countries prior to this. However, from my experience, the concept of conditionals isn't too hard to grasp, but it could be used as a springboard for speaking activities. Please see my post on The Best Countries as well.

With that in mind, I introduce to you this interesting website, If It Were My Home. I'll have to admit that I first heard of it from Nik Peachey. Andy Lintner and Annette Calabrese first started the page in 2010 to highlight the magnitude of the BP Oil Spill disaster, but have since expanded it to include interesting information on many countries.

If you click on 'Country Comparison', if I remember correctly, it will ask you permission to access your IP address to know where your home country is. This happens only once. If you do this, it will assume you wish to compare your home country with another. Click on another name further down the page.

When you've done that, something like this will be what you get:

Here, we're comparing Spain to Australia. On the map, you can see the difference in size of the two countries. It also lists a few comparisons between the them, e.g.

  "If Australia were your home instead of Spain, you would have 68.51% more chance of being employed."

If you wish to compare your home country (Spain) to a different country, select another from the drop-down list by clicking on the arrowhead, then on 'compare'. However, if you want to compare the chosen country (Australia) to another, you select the following button, where it says 'Compare (Australia) to other countries'. When you click this, a list of countries will be displayed. Select one.

In this way, you can compare any two countries you wish. Below, you can see a comparison between the two most digital countries in the world, according to a recent survey.

Notice that the statistics are highlighted in three different colours. Red is negative (e.g. ...you would consume 5.1 times more oil), green is positive (e.g. ...have 87.74% more chance of being employed), and blue is for babies! At least I haven't seen any other statistics highlighted in blue.

If you want to see additional information on a particular statistic, just click on the arrowhead to its right, and more information will appear.

Further down, you'll see a thumbs up and a thumbs down sign. These are for you to vote. Below this, you'll see more information on the country you're comparing to.

If you scroll even further below, you are allowed to enter your comments, and read those of others (if there are any) of the compared country.

So, as you can see, there's ample material for students to come up with second conditional sentences. Conversation shouldn't be restricted to this grammar structure; students should be encouraged to speak about any of the statistics they see or even the comments. For more ways of using the site, I'd recommend your reading Nik's post.

Related posts:

Index of all Material by Category

Conditional Type II with Norah Jones

Conditional Type III with Keith Whitley

The Best Countries To Live In