In our Real English video series this week passers-by answer the question What would you do if you won 10 millions dollars?
We use the second conditional to express hypothesis about the present and the future. There are two parts in each conditional sentence, the if-clause and the main clause.
The if-clause is usually followed by a verb in the past simple tense and introduces the hypothetical situation.
(1) If I won the lottery...
(2) If I lived in a different country...
(3) If I passed the exam...
The main clause expresses the result of the situation. We use the conditional auxiliary would to do so.
(1) I would buy another car.
(2) I would probably speak another language.
(3) I would be the happiest person in the world.
We use the second conditional to talk about hypothetical, unreal situations about the present and/or the future:
If I knew her name, I would tell you. (I don't know her name.)
She would be happy if she had a car. (But she doesn't have one.)
We often use were instead of was in both formal and informal styles with this structure.
If I were rich, I would spend all my life travelling.
If my nose were a bit shorter, I'd be quite pretty.
You can read the transcript for the video on the Real English site here.
For further listening practice, you can also watch this Real English video, where two girls, Christina and Karen, are interviewed. The two-minute video is good practice to revise some of the tenses we have been studying throughout the Real English series (personal information questions, present perfect, past simple, used to, and so on) but at one stage the interviewer asks Christina and Karen a question in the second conditional: What would you say to people, if you knew somebody from France was coming over, what phrases should they learn?
You can read the transcript for the video on the Real English site here.
For other activities on the second conditional on this blog, just type in 'second conditional' in the search box, but Kindness Boomerang, and Miss Universe to learn English spring to mind.
