Resumen de A response to Jones and Waller (2022)
I would first like to thank Jones and Waller for their thoughtful responses to my article. I welcome their contribution and take this opportunity to extend the constructive discussion by responding mainly to the points of disagreement they raise with my article.
Jones and Waller’s first point of disagreement relates to terminology. The authors state (2022: 2) that ‘we were not convinced by the attempt to reclassify conditionals into types A–D’, arguing instead for a functional categorization system. In reality, I do not feel we are actually in disagreement here. My intention in the original article was indeed to set out a new categorization system but I used the labels A, B, C and D as something of a shorthand, to avoid confusion with the existing labels (first, second, etc.). I completely agree that functional labels would be more appropriate. In fact, the existing abstract labels used for conditionals are something of an outlier in ELT pedagogical grammar as most grammar terminology used in ELT accounts is descriptive (although admittedly terms such as ‘passive’ and ‘imperative’ are not likely to be completely transparent to many learners). I see no reason why the use of abstract labels should be continued and would welcome the use of the terms ‘past/non-past’ and ‘real/unreal’. My views on this could certainly have been clearer in my paper.
