POSTED AUGUST 18, 2016 GABRIEL CLARK

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Are you confused about the first, second and third conditionals (‘if’ sentences) in
English? What are they? How do they work? What’s the difference between them?

Here’s a simple way to look at the first, second and third conditionals.

But first — take a look at these pictures. What do you think the people are saying?
OK. We’ll come back to these lovely people later…

Now – conditionals!

The first thing you need to know about the conditionals is that they are all the
same!

Here’s how:
 1. They all have two parts: the ‘if’ part, and the ‘result’ part.
2. They all have the same general structure: ‘If + tense, modal’ (modals are words
like can, will, would, could and may).

So let’s check this out in in more detail.

Have a look at the first conditional and think about the structure.
Pretty simple, right?

First Conditional:
This is the basis for ALL the other conditionals.

But when do we use it? We use the first conditional for real situations that can happen
in the future.

So what about unreal situations? In English if we want to express something unreal,

we have a trick: We push the grammar to the past.

So from the first conditional we push the tense and the modal to the past:
This is the second conditional.

It’s the same as the first, but we just pushed the tense and the modal to the past. So the
present became the past and ‘will’ became ‘would’.

Second Conditional:
But when do we use it? We use the second conditional for things that can’t happen
now or probably won’t happen in the future.

“OK. That’s all fine,” I can hear you say. But what do we do when we want to express
something ‘unreal’ AND in the past? Well that’s the fun part.

We push the past to the ‘double-past’ and the ‘would’ to the past. It sounds mad,
doesn’t it? But here we go:
This is the third conditional. It’s still the same as the first, but we’ve pushed the tense
and the modal to the past twice instead of once.

Third conditional:
But when do we use it?

We use the third conditional for things that never happened and the possible results.

“Wait… What?!! That’s crazy! Two ‘verb3s’ AND a ‘had’ AND a ‘have’?!” …I hear
you scream.

Yes, I know it’s a little tricky at first. When I learned Turkish, there were lots of times
when I felt like this. But then I realised that if I practice it only a few times, it gets
easy quickly.

So here are all three conditionals together in a pretty infographic:

“OK. But what about the scissors? Why did you put scissors in the images?” I can
hear you ask.

This is the fun part about conditionals. You can cut them up…
…and move them around. Like this:

So — “If you play with that rabbit, you’ll regret it” is the same as “You’ll regret it if
you play with that rabbit”. Enjoy!!

Action plan

Find an English-speaking friend or a teacher. Speak casually with him/her and try to
“slip in” (use) the first, second and third conditionals.

* Weird English alert! We can say ‘I was’ or ‘I were’ ONLY in the second conditional. Don’t ask me why. English is just weird
sometimes.

Inverted Conditionals: Have You Mastered This Advanced English Trick?

Mixed Conditionals in English -- Never Get Confused Again

Do You Know This Little English Trick to Make People Laugh?

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6 thoughts on “How to master first second and third

conditionals in English”

1. Safn says:

AUGUST 23, 2016 AT 12:12 PM

Study english very well

REPLY

1. Gabriel Clark says:

AUGUST 23, 2016 AT 1:00 PM

Thanks Safin. Hope you enjoyed the post!

REPLY

2. Melita says:

DECEMBER 29, 2016 AT 9:45 PM

 As far as I know there are also mixed conditionals. Could you show some examples
please?

REPLY

1. Gabriel Clark says:

DECEMBER 30, 2016 AT 10:24 AM

Hi Melita,

Yes. I really wanted to include mixed conditionals as well as the zero

conditional in this post, but there just wasn’t space.

But here are the two most common “mixed conditionals”:

FORM: present perfect + will (or modal)

WHY? To express something that finished in the past, but the effect’s still
important now as the condition (see my present perfect post).
EXAMPLE: If you’ve finished, we can go.

FORM: past perfect + would

WHY? To talk about a hypothetical past situation, but with the hypothetical
result being now.
EXAMPLE: If I’d listened to my mother, I wouldn’t be in this mess.

Th