Patty Pearson Grammar for everyone – conditionals
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If you watch this quick video, you will learn all about conditionals.
Conditionals are also known as if clauses and we use them rather frequently. There are four different conditionals and I will try to explain all four to you.
As you might have noticed I wrote I will explain, for the first time am writing my own blog instead of having someone on the marketing team write it for me. They told me if you write this one post yourself, you won’t have to worry about any posts in the future. When they give me a perfect example of a conditional I can hardly tell them no. So, here we are.
Back to the subject at hand; conditionals. I already stated there are four different ones and to make matters worse at times they can be used in combination. We shouldn’t focus on combining different conditionals, you will automatically get that right when you know all about the conditionals.
What do you use these if clauses for?
To describe the result of something that might happen or might have happened, but didn’t. To summarise, conditionals are used for possibilities. And each conditional is used for something different.
Conditional 0: used for facts, general truths and habits. Mostly used in writing, because it is a bit more formal.
Conditional 1: likely or possible things in the future. Often used in spoken language.
Conditional 2: impossible things in the present and unlikely things in the future. We use this one in spoken language as well.
Conditional 3: imagine how things could have been different in the past. If it had been different, something else would have happened. Both are impossible. Conditional 3 is the only one that we regularly see in writing and hear in spoken English.
Now you know what the conditionals do and if they are used in written or spoken language it is time to learn how to correctly formulate these if clauses. For this you are better off watching my video.
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