U8_Imaginary situations or events in the present or future

Imaginary situations or events in the present or future

Second Conditional

for unreal possibility

If I won the lottery, I would buy a car.

The second conditional is like the first conditional. We are still thinking about the future. We are thinking about a particular condition in the future, and the result of this condition. But there is not a real possibility that this condition will happen. For example, you donot have a lottery ticket. Is it possible to win? No! No lottery ticket, no win! But maybe you will buy a lottery ticket in the future. So you can think about winning in the future, like a dream. It's not very real, but it's still possible.

if	condition	result
	Past Simple	would + base verb
If	I won the lottery,	I would buy a car.

Notice that we are thinking about a future condition. We use the Past Simple tense to talk about the future condition. We use would + base verb to talk about the future result. The important thing about the second conditional is that there is an unreal possibility that the condition will happen.

Look at these example sentences:

if	condition	result
	Past Simple	would + base verb
If	I married Mary,	I would be happy.
If	Ram became rich,	she would marry him.
If	it snowed next July,	would you be surprised?
If	it snowed next July,	what would you do?

result	if	condition
would + base verb		Past Simple
I would be happy	if	I married Mary.
She would marry Ram	if	he became rich.
Would you be surprised	if	it snowed next July?
What would you do	if	it snowed next July?

More exercises 

Grammar 1

Grammar 2 

Exercise 1

Exercise 2 

Exercise 3

Exercise 4: 

Exercise 5: 

Exercise 6: 4U

Exercise 7:

Exercise 8: 

Exercise 9:

Exercise 10