Terebi o mitakereba, yuushoku o hayaku tabenasai.

[gasuton]

I tried using

Terebi o mitakereba, yuushoku o hayaku tabenasai. (If you want to watch TV, hurry and eat your dinner.)
Tim Sensei's Corner - Japanese Verbs - Lesson 8

to a Japanese for practice, but they said it is not usual to speak this way, that the above would be more for writen. They said I should say

テリビ を みたかたら ゆうしょうく を はやく たべなさい --(1)

I took rough notes when whey said this, but now when I go to look for more references on this type of sentence on the interenet I cannot find the word "みたかたら", can someone confirm is (1) is correct, have I got the spelling of "みたかたら" incorrect?

Thanks for your help!

 

[masaegu]

みたかったら, not みたかたら.

Also, it is ゆうしょく, not ゆうしょうく.

Dang, also, it is テレビ, not テリビ.

Finally, no spacing between words, please.

 

[Mike Cash]

I have no idea who Tim Sensei is, but as a general rule of thumb, take with a large grain of salt anything you get from anybody who adds "Sensei" to his own name (and especially if he puts it before his name).

 

[Macrobiotic]

That site does contain a few errors but most of the sentences work if you consider it as a disposable practice object and a backdoor around heavy linguistic terms rather than an official learning source. I used it to get started back when I knew absolutely nothing but kana and basic verb conjugation.
I have an easy time understanding concepts in themselves but a hard time understanding made up academic terms meant as gateways to those concepts. This is why I used a somewhat crude backdoor to get started.

It's never good however to just rely on one source, I corrected some of the errors from that site by also using the japanese section in about.com which is written by a native speaker. Always be critical and willing to revise what you have learned. Sooner or later you will be able to read japanese dictionaries in japanese only and get proper explanations for everything, but to get there you might want to use what disposable tools you can find. Knowledge through self studying is like entrepreneurship in this aspect. You don't have access to the best resources, tools and means of production from the start and will have to gradually reinvest your earnings until you reach deluxe level. This is the one major disadvantage of not having a teacher to use for direction and as a walking dictionary at all times.