English with George

What the Conditionals are

A conditional is a sentence or part of a sentence that expresses a condition. There are five main ways of constructing conditional sentences in English.

In all cases, these sentences are made up of an if clause and a main clause.

• The Zero Conditional
• The First Conditional
• The Second Conditional
• The Third Conditional

All of them begin with:

• when
• if
• unless

A condition is what must happen before something else can happen. Conditional tenses are used to speculate about:

• What could happen
• What might have happened
• What we wish would happen