An Introduction to Conditionals
In English, we use conditionals to talk about one idea which comes from another.
For example:
If I drink more coffee, I’ll go crazy.
If it rains, we won’t play baseball.
If I make a purple cake, will you eat it?
No, I won’t eat a purple cake, but if the cake is green and beautiful, I will eat all of it.
These are simple examples of the First Conditional, a common and simple conditional form. As you can see, we can use conditionals in a sentence or a question, and we can use them with “no”.
There are more conditionals. We’ll look at them all here, but you don’t need to understand them all now.
Let’s talk about MONEY.
| Conditional | Example |
|---|---|
| First Conditional | If I find $100, I’ll buy some new shoes. |
| Second Conditional | If I found $100, I would buy some new shoes. |
| Third Conditional | If I had found $100, I would have bought some new shoes. |
These are the three main conditionals people use a lot and we’ll talk about each. After we practice those three, we’ll talk about more conditionals you can also see.