A Video Summary About the The conditional in English
A few explanations about the The conditional
Exercise 1
Exercise 2
Exercise 3
A Video Summary About The Conditional in English
A few explanations about the conditional
CONSTRUCTION
The second conditional uses the past simple after ‘if’, then ‘would’ with the infinitive:
| IF + PAST SIMPLE, WOULD + VERB BARE INFINITIVE |
*We use it to talk about things in the future that are probably not going to be true, for example:
“If I won the lottery, I would buy a big house” (I probably won’t win the lottery)
*We use it to talk about something in the present, which is impossible, because it’s not true.
“If I had his number, I would call him.” (I don’t have his number now, so it’s impossible for me to call him).
CHANGING THE ORDER:
In conditional sentences, the order of the clauses is not fixed. You may have to rearrange the pronouns and adjust punctuation when you change the order of the clauses, but the meaning is the same.
If it rained, you would get wet.
OR
You would get wet if it rained.
If you went to bed earlier, you wouldn’t be so tired.
OR
You wouldn’t be so tired if you went to bed earlier.
REMEMBER
When we use the negative of the past simple tense, we need to use the auxiliary verb ‘did’ + not.
When we use the negative of would, we add not.
Here’s what it looks like when constructing the second conditional:
POSITIVE: If Sarah had a good job, she would live in her dream house.
NEGATIVE: If Sarah didn’t have a good job, she wouldn’t live in her dream house.
POSITIVE, NEGATIVE: If I lived in the city, I wouldn’t have to take the bus.
NEGATIVE, POSITIVE: If I didn’t live in the city, I would have to take the bus.
Exercises About The conditional
Exercise 1: Imagine a future without work, the possibilities would be endless!
Exercise 2: COMPLETE THESE SECOND CONDITIONAL SENTENCES USING THE VERBS IN BRACKETS
Exercise 3: There are one or two verb mistakes in each sentence, see if you can find them and put them the correct tense.
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