WOULD The 10 Uses English Grammar Lesson
(upbeat music)
- Hello, lovely students,
and welcome back to English with Lucy.
Today, we’re going to talk
about a really annoying word,
a word that troubles
so many of my students,
“would”.
Ugh, isn’t it annoying?
It’s got so many uses.
Well, don’t you worry,
because today we are
going to be going through
the 10 uses of “would”.
We are going to go
through, in immense detail,
with lots of examples,
and there will be lots
of exercises in the PDF.
You will leave this lesson
feeling more confident about
the ways you can use “would”.
I’d like to remind you that, as always,
I have created a free PDF
that goes with this lesson.
It will show you everything
we’re going to talk about today,
in a nice, clear layout,
and it has lots of exercises,
so you can put what you learned today
into practise later on.
If you would like to
download this free PDF,
just click on the link
in the description box.
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Right, let’s get started with the lesson,
and firstly, I want to
do just a little focus
on the pronunciation.
Speakers of certain languages
really struggle with that “wo” sound.
They almost say, “gho”,
you want to make your lips
nice and round, like this.
Almost as if you’re going to kiss,
but with a little hole. (chuckles)
It’s like, you’re saying,
“Ooh”, but it’s even smaller.
“oo”.
And then go straight into “ud”,
“oo-ud”, “wud”, “wood”, “would”
I’m sure that some of
you didn’t need that,
but I’m sure that some
of you did, actually.
Let’s start with the first use of would.
We use “would” to make polite requests.
This is one of the most
common phrases using “would”,
when we want to ask
for something politely,
we say, “I would like”, or “I’d like”.
“I’d like a cup of tea, please.”
Or “I’d like the scones with jam.”
There’s a big fight in the UK
about how to pronounce “scone”.
Some say “scone”, some say “scon”,
scone like cone, scon like gone.
I’ve always said, “scon”.
If you are a British or
a fan of British culture,
which do you say? “Scon”
or “scone”, let me know.
We can also use “would like”
to request things for other people to.
“My husband would like a hot chocolate,
and the New York Times.”
That is what he likes.
The first time we ever went
to a posh hotel together,
very early in our relationship,
they said, “What would
you like in the morning?
Which newspaper and hot drink.”
And he just panicked and
said “A hot chocolate
and the New York Times.” (laughs)
The structure of this is
“Subject + would like + object”
or “Subject + would like + to infinitive”.
We can also use “would” to
make requests as a question.
“Would you close the curtains, please?”
Or “Would you buy me a newspaper?”
Preferably the New York Times,
with a hot chocolate.
Number two, we can use “would”
to make invitations and offers.
For example,
if you want to politely offer
someone some food or a drink,
you can say, “Would
you like a cup of tea?”
“Would you like a biscuit with that?”
If you want to invite somebody
to an event or a place,
you can say,
“Would you like to come to our
house tomorrow for dinner?”
Or “Would you like to come
with me to the party tonight?”
We can also use “would”
in reported speech.
I’ve made a video recently
on reported speech.
I’ll leave it down there
in the description box.
It’s very concise.
I’m sure it will help you,
if you want to look in more detail,
but just as a brief overview,
we can use “would” in reported speech.
In reported speech,
“would” is the past of “will”.
In direct speech,
“I will help you move house.” said Robert.
Transforming that into reported speech,
“Robert said that he
would help me move house.”
“Will” changes to “would”.
Whenever you see “will” in direct speech,
you can use “would” in reported speech.
Some more examples.
“She said she would come.”
“They told me they would
finish it by the next day.”
“I said I would drive
them to the airport.”
Number four.
Now this one is really important,
because often students
don’t know about this,
but we use it a lot in speeches, natives.
My husband, Will, uses this all the time,
and it really annoyed me once,
because we filmed a
video for this channel,
and he used “would” all
the time, in this way,
and I think it really
confused some of the viewers.
So I’m really happy to be
talking about it today.
We use “would” to talk about
typical behaviour in the past.
If you didn’t know this before,
this is going to make you think,
oh, I understand why they
said “would” all the time now.
We use “would” to talk about
repeated actions in the past.
Habits that we don’t do anymore.
“When I was a child,
we would go to France for our holidays.”
That was a repeated
action, typical behaviour,
but I’m not a child anymore.
I don’t go to France
anymore for my holidays.
“When Julian was at university,
he would eat ready meals
almost every night.”
He doesn’t do this anymore.
He’s not a student,
but when he was a student,
this is what he “would” do.
Note that you can’t use this
to talk about state verbs,
like “love”, “hate”, “want” or “have”.
For states, we use the
structure “used to” instead.
We don’t say, “When I was a
child, I would love chocolate.”
We do say, “When I was a child,
I used to love chocolate.”
Because “love” is a state verb,
so it doesn’t go with “would”.
“When I was a child, I
used to love chocolate,
but now I don’t like it.”
What a lie. What a lie.
Number five.
We use “would” to talk about
willingness in the past.
If you want to talk about how
willing or happy someone was
to do something in the
past, you can use “would”.
Although we normally use
this in a negative way,
so it’s more likely
that we use “wouldn’t”.
“The shop wouldn’t give me a refund,
even though my new phone
is obviously broken.”
They weren’t willing to,
or “Dave wouldn’t carry
any of my boxes for me.”
He wasn’t willing to.
“My parents wouldn’t lend me any money,
so I couldn’t go out.”
Number six,
we also use “would” in
hypothetical situations.
This is another really key one.
Hypothetical situations are situations
that we are imagining.
They’re not real.
“The restaurant would be too expensive,
so we won’t go there.”
(chuckles) Basically.
“I would like to live in Spain,
because the weather’s beautiful.”
But I live in England. So I can’t.
“I would get seasick
with those huge waves,
so I’m not going on the boat trip.”
or “It would be great
to travel more often.”
Number seven,
we use “would” in conditional sentences.
I have a full video on the conditionals.
We go into more detail in that video.
I’ve left a link for you
in the description box,
but just as an overview,
I’ll go over it now,
relating to “would”.
We use “would” in the second conditional
to talk about imaginary, impossible,
or very unlikely
situations in the present.
These are similar to the
hypothetical situations
that we spoke about just before,
but with the second
conditional, we use two clauses,
the “If clause” and the “Would clause”.
“If I moved to another country,
I would miss my parents.”
“Claire would take a trip around the world
if she won the lottery.”
Take a look at the structure
of these sentences,
but pay attention. Okay?
The structure is “If +
subject + past simple comma
subject + would + the
base form of the verb.”
However, that’s why I said pay attention.
That little comma, just there,
is only needed if the,
“If clause” comes first,
you can swap the clauses over,
and in that case, the comma isn’t needed.
I know it seems like such a tiny thing,
but if you’re in an exam,
it’s really important.
Please also remember, even
though we’re using past tenses,
we are imagining things in the present.
Some more examples.
“If my children ate all their vegetables,
they would get ice cream.”
We’re using a comma there,
because the “If clause” comes first.
“I would take Spanish
classes if I had time.”
The “If clause” comes
second, so there’s no comma.
“We’d get a Labrador if we
were allowed to get a dog.”
I said “We’d”, the contraction.
“We would”, “We’d”.
“If they spoke English, they
would move to New Zealand.”
Next up we have the third conditional,
and this is the conditional
that we use to talk about
hypothetical situations in the past.
We often use this structure
to imagine changing the past,
or imagining things happening differently.
“I would have called you if I
had known you were at home.”
or “If she had helped us, we
would have finished earlier.”
Let’s look at the structure quickly.
The whole comma situation is very similar.
“If + subject + past perfect comma
subject + would have + past participle.”
If the “If clause” comes first,
we need a comma, if it
comes second, we do not.
Let’s take a look at some examples.
“If he’d practised more,
he would have passed his driving test.”
“She wouldn’t have missed her flight
if her alarm had gone off.”
“If you’d bought a ticket,
you wouldn’t have got a fine.”
I said, “You’d”, “You had”.
Moving on to number eight.
We can use “would” with “wish”.
We use “would” with “wish”
to talk about things that we
want people to do or not to do.
We often use it when we’re
annoyed by someone’s habit
or something they do regularly.
“I wish you wouldn’t
leave the door unlocked.”
“He wishes his dad wouldn’t smoke.”
The structure is as follows,
“Subject + wish + subject + would
- the base form of the verb.
“I wish you’d clean the house more often.”
“I wish you wouldn’t borrow my clothes.”
“They wish their neighbor’s
dog wouldn’t bark at night.”
“We wish our grandparents
would move closer to us.”
Number nine, we use “would”
to talk about preferences.
If we want to talk about what we
or what somebody else
prefers from several options,
we use the phrase “would rather”.
This could be a real
situation in the present,
or a hypothetical situation.
“I’d rather get a takeaway
today, I’m too tired to cook.”
or “Would you rather go to
the cinema or to the theatre?”
The structure is,
“Subject + would rather +
the base form of the verb.”
Some more examples,
“Would you rather have tea or coffee?”
or “They’d rather not come tonight
because they’re not feeling well.”
or “Tina would rather meet
us at the restaurant.”
Finally, number 10,
we use “would” to give opinions.
When we want to give our
opinion about something,
but we’re not sure we’re correct
or we want to be really polite,
we can use “would” as
part of some set phrases.
We often say,
“I would think”,
“I would imagine”,
or “I would guess”.
“I’d imagine it’s been a
tough few days for him.”
“I’d guess he’d want to help.”
“I’d think we’d need
to talk to the manager
before we commit to this.”
Right. That is it.
The 10 uses for “would”.
Now it is time to test your understanding,
by taking the quiz in the PDF.
If you’d like to download that PDF,
the link is in the description box.
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I’ve got a pronunciation tool there.
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If you would like to improve
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then I also have my vlogging channel,
where we document our life here
in the English countryside,
and every single vlog is fully subtitled,
so you can use them
for listening practise,
and to acquire more vocabulary.
I will see you soon for another lesson.
Mwah.
(kiss smacks)
Let’s look at the structure quickly.
The whole…
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She wouldn’t have missed her
flight, if her, ah (laughs)
This tiny, tiny lipstick.
(production cut beeps)
Plus subject, plus past…
(production cut beeps)
The stroke.
The structure is, if plus subject plus…
(production cut beeps)
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