ABSTRACT
In this article Jones and Waller investigate a structure which figures prominently in language teaching based on a grammatical syllabus: the conditionals. Their argument is that the pedagogic model which focuses on four (or indeed three) types of conditional sentences is inaccurate and misleading for learners, and they back this up with extensive data from a corpus of authentic English. The last part of the article, not included here, discusses possible teaching approaches.
