LESSON NOTES

Upper Intermediate S1 #19

Hitting the Dusty American
Campaign Trail

CONTENTS
2 English
2 Vocabulary
3 Sample Sentences
4 Vocabulary Phrase Usage
4 Grammar
5 Cultural Insight

# 19
COPYRIGHT © 2012 INNOVATIVE LANGUAGE LEARNING. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
 ENGLISH

1. DAVE: Hey, Sheila, big news.

2. SHEILA: What's up?

3. DAVE: I just got a call from Oregon. My district is fairly conservative, but
there is this very popular moderate Democrat businessman. He is
going to try and unseat the incumbent representative in the fall.

4. SHEILA: OK… So what does that have to do with you?

5. DAVE: He called me up today and asked whether I wanted to be his

campaign manager.

6. SHEILA: What? Are you serious? Are you going to do it?

7. DAVE: I don't know... If he wins, I will get to work in his office. But if he
loses, I will be completely unemployed.

8. SHEILA: Yeah, but that seems like such a great opportunity.

9. DAVE: It is. If I do it, it will look great on my resume too. Anyhow, I have to
get going.

10. SHEILA: OK, when you get home, we will talk about this more.

VOCABULARY

V oc abular y English C lass

an administrative division of
district an area noun

a document detailing a
résumé person's professional noun
experience

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 on the right of the political
spectrum, favors less
conservative adjective
government and traditional
morals

not extreme, towards the

moderate center adjective

currently serving, previously

incumbent elected adjective

an effort to get elected to

office by making speeches,
meeting voters, and
campaign delivering a message about noun
why the public should
support you

unemployed not working, without a job adjective

a chance; a set of
opportunity circumstances that makes it noun
possible to do something

SAMPLE SENTENCES

There are many clothing factories in the I'm applying for a job soon and need to
Garment District of New York City. update my résumé.

Liberals and conservatives rarely vote for Most Americans are moderate and do not
the same candidate. identify with the extreme right or left.

Once elected, and incumbent The presidential campaigns usually start in

Representative has a 90% change of Summer for the November election.
getting re-elected.

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At the height of the recession, one in every We may see increased opportunities for
ten people was unemployed. jobs and commerce next year.

VOCABULARY PHRASE USAGE

"incumbent"

Dave says, "He is going to try and unseat the incumbent representative in the fall." As we
learned in the vocabulary, incumbent representatives have a very high percentage of getting
re-elected. This means that it is quite difficult to unseat, or defeat, an incumbent. This rule is
changed when there are large waves of popular sentiment change, like when Obama was
elected president or again in 2010 when the Republicans took control of the House of
Representatives.

For Example:

1. "In 2010, Republican challengers unseated over sixty incumbent Democrats."

"campaign"

Dave says, "He called me up today and asked whether I wanted to be his campaign
manager." We learned in the vocabulary that a campaign is an effort to get elected to political
office. Every campaign needs a campaign manager. This individual is responsible for running
the day-to-day operations of the campaign such as the candidate's schedule, ballot
registration, media appearances, advertisements, and any aspect of his campaign. It is
extremely important for any candidate to have a strong campaign manager in order to be
effective.

For Example:

1. "The candidate was good, but his campaign manager messed up: his advertisements
were terrible and he didn't even get on the ballot!"

GRAMMAR

The Focus of This Lesson Is Using the Future Real Conditional.

"I don't know... If he wins, I will get to work in his office. But if he loses, I will be completely
unemployed."

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Dave has a big decision to make. If he accepts this job and his candidate wins, he will be
rewarded with a great long-term job and good experience. But if his candidate loses, then he
will be unemployed and have nothing to show for it.

When we talk about future possibilities, it is very useful to use the future real conditional tense.
This tense is a bit misleading because we can use it to talk about hypothetical situations rather
than concrete "real" events. To use this tense, we use an "if/when" statement followed by a
verb in simple present tense to indicate the condition. After the conditional phrase, we place a
simple future statement with the action. Let's look at that in some examples.

If/when condition, future result.

For Example:

1. "If I eat dinner out tonight, I will not make dinner at home."

2. "When they return to the United States, they will fly through London."

We can also reverse the order in this manner:

Future result if/when condition.

For Example:

1. "I will go home when the boss leaves the office."

2. "He won't get on the train if it is too crowded."

An important thing to remember is the difference between "if" and "when" in these instances.
When we use "if," we are talking more about an uncertain future. "When," on the other hand, is
more for when we are certain about the future and are just giving a reference of time for when
you will do something. Let's look through the examples of future real conditional from the
dialogue and find when they are talking about hypothetical situations and when they are
certain about the future. (hypothetical)

For Example:

1. Dave: "If he wins, I will get to work in his office." (hypothetical)

2. Dave: "But if he loses, I will be completely unemployed." (hypothetical)

3. Sheila: "OK, when you get home, we will talk about this more." (certain)

CULTURAL INSIGHT

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American Political Campaigns

Campaigns are big events in the United States. Unlike parliamentary systems, people vote for
individual candidates rather than just parties. This means that a candidate who is well-liked
and popular can win in a district that maybe does not share his political views strongly.
Campaigns spend millions of dollars organizing events, buying advertising time, calling
voters, sending out information, and generally trying to "sell" their candidate to voters. The
most effective campaigns start with appealing politicians, but they try to emphasize the
candidate's strengths and minimize his or her weaknesses.

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