Conditional Forms

If you had all the money in the world, which home would you want to buy?Cast your vote below! Let's see which house wins.

Did you notice the use of "If" in the first sentence? This is known as a CONDITIONAL sentence. We use this to talk about situations in the past, present, and future that occur only when a condition happens. If a condition occurs, then it will result in something. For example, if I had all the money in the world, I would buy a brick mansion with a gate.

There are four types of CONDITIONAL patterns as you can see from the chart:
1st conditional (a situation that will most likely happen in the future)
2nd conditional (a situation that is unreal or almost impossible)
3rd conditional (a past imagined situation that has no chance of happening)

Notice there is one more condition not listed above. It's the 0 conditional. This is a situation that is always true and the sentence is formed by present simple, comma, present simple. For example, "If I eat too much, I feel sick" or  "If I put ice cubes in hot water, it will melt." These conditions will always be true.

Sometimes the difference between the 1st conditional and 2nd conditional is not quite clear to some students. The difference can be sometimes based on our own opinion of the situation (whether we think it's possible or not.) If you look at the example for the 2nd condition, it's possible that if she saved a lot of money, she could buy the mansion. However, she is a shopaholic and it is almost impossible for her to save a lot of money, so it's unlikely to happen. 

For the 3rd conditional, it's always talking about a past event that will not have any chance of ever happening. Most of the time, we use this to express regret. I regret not buying the lottery because if I had, I would have bought the mansion already. It's an unreal situation. We'll never know if it will happen or not!