Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to correctly form second and third conditional sentences to talk about unreal present and past situations.

Lesson Explanation

Building on the first conditional (Part 5, Lesson 3): the second conditional describes an unreal or unlikely present/future situation:

If + simple past, would + base verb If I won the lottery, I would travel the world. (unreal — probably won't happen)

The third conditional describes an unreal past situation — something that did not actually happen:

If + past perfect, would have + past participle If I had studied, I would have passed the exam. (but I didn't study, and didn't pass)

The genuinely important distinction from first conditional: first conditional describes something genuinely possible; second and third describe something unreal — either unlikely (second) or already in the unchangeable past (third).

Practice Questions