First or Second Conditional English Grammar Practice
Hey there I’m Emma from mmmEnglish!
Welcome to another English grammar lesson
here at mmmEnglish.
We’re going to continue exploring conditionals
which are one of the most interesting
and exciting grammar structures in English, I think so.
This video today is going to help you to expand
your understanding of the first and the second
conditionals in English.
I think you already know the basics, especially if you’re
a subscriber because you would have seen
all of my lessons about conditionals,
all of the links are in the description below
but today we’re going to go a little deeper on
the first and the second conditional.
I’m going to give you lots of examples to help you
understand when to use the first and when to use
the second. Plus I’ll also be talking about
how to use conditionals without ‘if’
which is pretty shocking, I know because
‘if’ is the star of conditional sentences, you know.
But actually, you can use other words in place of ‘if’
as well so I’m going to go through all of that
right here during this lesson.
Okay let’s do a quick check together
before we get started.
You know there are five different types of conditional
sentences,
you know that the basic form of all of these sentences
is the same, right? We have an ‘if’ clause
and a main clause.
And the things that are different about these five types
of conditional sentences relate to time
and also to verb tense.
Now if you don’t know any of these things
don’t worry about it but
I do recommend that you check out this lesson up here.
It’s an overview of conditional sentences,
it might help to jog your memory and get you thinking
correctly about conditional sentences
before we get started here.
So I want you to tell me. What’s the difference
between the first conditional and the second conditional
So the best way to think about it
is the first conditional is real.
We use it to talk about things that are possible
in the future and there’s a likely chance
of it happening.
So to make the first conditional, it’s simple.
We use the present simple verb in our ‘if’ clause
and we use the future tense ‘will’
in our main clause
so we use ‘will’ along with a bare infinitive verb.
If I miss the bus, I will take a taxi.
If they lose the game, they won’t go to the finals.
If you get too close to the flames
you’ll get burned.
So notice that with all of these examples,
these are real. They are possible
and they’re likely to happen in the future.
Now when we move to the second conditional,
we actually have to leave the real world, the actual world
behind us.
Because although there is a possibility
of the result happening,
when we use the second conditional, it tells us that the
action is quite unlikely
so it’s often called the unreal tense.
So we use the second conditional to talk about
imaginary situations in the present so these are
unreal situations. We also use it to talk about
unlikely future outcomes as well.
So it looks like ‘if’ and the past simple in our ‘if’ clause
and then ‘would’ with the bare infinitive verb following
in our main clause.
If I missed the bus, I would take a taxi.
If they lost the game, they wouldn’t go to the finals.
If you got too close to the flames,
you’d get burned.
Wait a second.
These examples look
pretty similar to the first conditional examples right?
So with just a couple of little edits,
we have subtly changed these results
to seem less likely.
Suddenly we’ve got a set of hypothetical or
imaginary situations and their results but those results
are unlikely to actually happen right?
Such is the second conditional.
Many ideas can be correctly expressed in English using
both the first
and the second conditional sentence structure
but each type of sentence changes the meaning
noticeably so you really need to be careful
about which type of sentence structure you’re using.
You’ve got to carefully choose.
So let’s look at a couple of examples to help you out.
So we’ve got
If I miss the bus, I will take a taxi.
If I missed the bus, I would take a taxi.
Now in the first example, this is real and possible.
It’s based on an actual situation.
Just imagine that you are walking down the street
quite quickly towards the bus stop
because it’s actually the exact time that the bus
is supposed to arrive and there is a chance
it’s pulling up at the bus stop right now.
You’re hoping that it’s not because
you’re going to be late otherwise right?
You still want to make it to work on time.
But in your head, as you’re walking
you’re coming up with a backup plan, right, a plan B.
Here’s what you’re going to do.
If I miss the bus, I will take a taxi.
So this situation is based on a real-life scenario right.
Something that is likely to happen.
There’s a good chance that that bus
has already come to the bus stop and you’re not there.
But the second example in the second conditional,
totally imaginary. Maybe I’ve got no plans at all
to take the bus,
maybe I don’t even take the bus to work.
Or perhaps I’m extremely punctual.
I’m almost never late to the bus.
But for whatever reason, this thing, the outcome, is very
unlikely to happen and we know that
because we’re using the second conditional.
So you can see how powerful this decision is right?
The grammar structure that you choose influences
the meaning of your sentence.
Let’s do a few more examples together
just to make sure you’ve got it.
If I run out of butter, I’ll just use oil.
So again imagine, imagine that you’re baking
and there isn’t much butter left.
You can’t be bothered going to the shops so
I’ve got a plan. If I run out of butter,
I know what I’m going to do and this is a likely event
right. If I ran out of butter, I’d just use oil.
Now this is a hypothetical situation.
I’m not talking about a specific baking event
that’s happening now.
I’m just talking about what I would hypothetically do
if this ever happened to me while I was baking.
I could be giving advice to someone who’s asking.
If I ran out of butter, I’d just use oil.
You won’t notice the difference.
If she finds a dog on the street, she’ll adopt it.
She loves dogs, right? She has plans to adopt a dog.
In fact, she’s looking for a dog and there are lots
of street dogs in her area.
So it’s quite likely that if she finds a dog on the street
that doesn’t have a home,
it’s quite likely that she’ll adopt it.
If she found a dog on the street, she’d adopt it.
So again, she loves dogs. Perhaps there’s actually
not many street dogs in her area
which makes the outcome quite unlikely right?
If she were taller, she would play basketball.
Okay so this is the second conditional right
and she’s imagining what she would do
if she had been born taller
but she wasn’t right? She can’t change her height.
So this situation has to be unreal.
So for that reason, be careful because we can’t
write a version of this in the first conditional.
There isn’t a likely chance or a likely outcome
where this would happen right?
She can’t change the way that she is
however
we can make a couple of changes to make it possible.
We can say
you know if we’re talking about a child
who is still growing then it’s possible right
but we might have to change the verb and say
If she grows taller, she will play basketball.
It’s really important to keep in mind that many ideas
can be expressed in the first or the second conditional
depending on whether they’re real or imaginary.
But not all ideas can be expressed
in both tenses right so be careful about that.
Real versus imaginary.
Hopefully, you’re starting to feel pretty good
about the difference between
the first and the second conditional right?
But I’ve got one extra
thing that I want you to keep in mind.
So take a look at this sentence here.
Is it a conditional sentence?
It has two clauses.
It has a present tense verb in the first clause.
It has ‘will’ and the base verb in the main clause
but it doesn’t have the word ‘if’.
It actually doesn’t matter. This sentence is still
a conditional sentence. A first conditional sentence
and there are a couple of very specific words
that you can use to replace ‘if’
in the first
and also the second conditional sentence structure.
It’s still a conditional sentence
but the word that you choose, of course, has
the ability to change the meaning
of your sentence slightly.
Unless it rains soon, the lake will dry up.
Or
if it rains soon, the lake won’t dry up.
Both of these sentences are okay. They’re great
but of course, the change affects the meaning
of our sentence slightly.
So we need to be aware of that.
So you can definitely replace ‘if’ with the word ‘unless’
but the meaning is slightly different. It means if not
or except if.
And you can use ‘unless’ in the first
and the second conditional sentence structure
but it can’t be used to talk about past situations
that can’t be changed right
so you can’t use ‘unless’ in the third
conditional sentence structure for example.
Check out some examples.
Unless she apologises, I will not forgive her.
Unless it gets below zero degrees the water won’t freeze
Unless they fired me, I wouldn’t leave the company.
Besides ‘unless’ and ‘if’ we can also use ‘as long as’
which is really, really useful if you want to set a limit
or a condition on the expression.
So this is like saying if and only if the condition happens
so if the condition doesn’t happen
then the result is not possible or it’s not allowed.
‘As long as’ is usually used with the first conditional
because it’s used when the result is expected.
As long as I get time off work, I’ll come for a visit.
As long as it’s not too crowded, we’ll stay for dinner.
As long as he finishes his homework,
he’ll join you at the skate park.
Great work! We’re almost done,
we’ve got one more option to replace ‘if’ with
and that is using ‘supposing’ or ‘supposing that’.
So using ‘supposing that’ helps the listener to
imagine a situation so it’s really similar to using ‘if’
but just with a bit of extra command to really tell
the listener that you want them to
imagine, turn on their imagination.
Now it can be used in either the first or the second
conditional but it’s much more comfortable
in the second conditional for sure because you’re
imagining right.
Supposing I can change my flight,
I’ll come a few days earlier.
Supposing you got a huge Christmas bonus,
would you go on a holiday?
So conditionals can be quite cool really, you can
tweak and you can change them
to help add extra layers of meaning in your sentence
and the best way to become familiar
with conditional sentences is to start writing them
and to start experimenting with them
and right now we’re going to jump into a really
quick quiz to help you put what you learned here today
into action.
So I’m going to give you a few different situations
and you’re going to decide which conditional sentence
is the best one for you to use.
So I want you to write your answers down
in the comments below so that I can come down
and I can check them for you
and if you’re feeling up to it,
try and experiment a little with ‘if’.
Perhaps you can use one of the other words
or expressions that we practised.
As long as, unless.
Right so here’s a situation.
It’s my friend’s birthday next week
I want to get her a present and
I always forget things like birthdays
and she always gets quite upset when I forget things.
So
in the quiz, I’d ask you to pause the video
just for a second to think about the situation
but let’s just do this one together.
So this situation is pretty real, right?
There’s a birthday plan next week. It’s coming up soon.
I also know that there’s a pretty high chance
I’ll forget to buy a present because it’s a really
bad habit of mine.
You can’t really say that this situation is hypothetical
can you? There’s a high probability that it will happen.
So I think we need to use the first conditional
so a good sentence would be
If I forget to buy my friend a birthday present,
she will be upset.
See that wasn’t so hard was it?
Now it’s your turn. Situation one.
You’re dreaming about buying a new car.
The car you want is expensive.
A promotion at work would help you
to be able to afford it.
Nobody at work has talked about
the possibility of a promotion.
You’re just dreaming it.
So pause the video and write your sentence.
Situation two.
You’re deciding what to cook for dinner.
Someone suggests making a spicy dish.
You know that your child hates spicy food,
there’s no possibility that your child
is gonna eat something spicy.
Again, pause the video, write your sentence.
Situation three.
A friend asked you to take care of their dog
while they’re on holidays.
You would feel horrible if the dog ran away.
You know that it probably won’t happen
but you ask your friend to imagine
that possibility anyway.
Situation four.
You love coffee so much.
You imagine what would happen if you ran out of coffee
Luckily you know that would never actually happen.
Awesome work gang!
I’m so proud of you for sticking with me all the way
through to the end and for putting everything
that you learned into practice right.
It’s the best way to make it stick
and if this lesson was really useful for you, then
share it with one of your friends who also needs
to improve their English grammar.
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