What are conditionals in the English language?

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Asked by @ Filomena Maria Palmieri (Community Student)

What are conditionals in the English language?

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Answered by @ Elo Kasia

Elo Kasia is the English Mentor for  ” English Grammar and Speaking Academy” ,  Join now.

What are conditionals in the English language? | English Time Ask Elo

Question Time: What are conditionals in the English language? | English Time Ask Elo

  @ Filomena Maria Palmieri, Thank you for your question.

  As usual, I will try to explain the difference using simple language and plenty of examples.

What are conditionals in the English language?

Thank you, youtube – Anglo-Link.

What are conditionals in the English language? They are often confusing to students of English, so I will try to explain them using simple language and plenty of examples.

Conditional sentences are used to talk about events and their results.

They are made up of:

If (conditional) clause and Main clause

The two events are connected. One event or situation is a condition (it “depends”) for another event or situation to happen. These events could be factual (real) or hypothetical (unreal, imaginary).

The results could be in the present, future or past.

Conditional sentences express different degrees of possibility. Sometimes the situations are likely, or possible to happen, sometimes they are very unlikely (almost impossible), or they can be used to talk about unreal situations which did not happen, but we talk about “what if” the past had been different.

How do we form conditional sentences?

They are made using different English verb tenses, depending on what type of situation you are describing.

What are the different types of conditional sentences?

Depending on “how possible” a situation is to happen; we differentiate between 4 different types of conditional sentences.

Factual conditional (usually known as 0-conditional)

Used to talk about habits, scientific facts, and general truths, if something else happens first.

• if a dog is happy, it wags its tail.
• Ice melts if you heat it up.

Possible conditional (1st conditional)

Used to talk about possible future events and their likely results.

• If it is sunny tomorrow, we will go to the beach.
• We will be late if we don’t hurry up.

Present unreal conditional (2nd conditional)

Past unreal conditional (3rd conditional)

Elo Kasia is the Community Mentor for ” English Grammar and Speaking Academy“.

Director at Eloquent Learning Online School www.eloquentlearning.com.