Podcast 53 - B1 IELTS 4.5 Third Conditional

The structure of the third conditional

Hello, and today, I'm going to talk to you about the third conditional. The structure of the third conditional is,

If + subject + had + past participle...

Past participle. That's the third column in your list of verbs. For example, drive - drove - driven, driven is the past participle. And then if we're writing that sentence, we put a comma. And then you have,

...subject + would, could, should, might + have + past participle

So an example would be,

If I had gone out last night, I would have gone to the cinema.

Past situations we can do nothing about

Now, what we can see about the third conditional is that we're talking about situations in the past - situations that happened before. If I had gone out last night, I would have gone to the cinema. So that means that I didn't go out last night. But if I had gone out, I would have gone to the cinema. That's where I would have gone. Now what we often do with the third conditional is that we're talking about what we call in English - spilt milk. You know, if you have a glass of milk and you knock it over, well, what can you do about it? Nothing! I mean, you can clean it up. But I mean, you can't really put the milk back in the glass. It's over, it's finished. There's nothing that we can do about that situation.

Third conditional water under the bridge
Water under the bridge

There's another little expression as well that we use, which is - water under the bridge, it's water under the bridge. If you stand on the bridge over a river, and you watch the water flow down under the bridge, and out the other side, that water won't come back again, it's finished, it's gone! So the third conditional talks about those situations in the past that we can do nothing about.

Of course, as with the other conditionals, we can put the structure the other way around. So the if clause is at the end,

I would have gone to the cinema if I had gone out last night.

So here are some more examples.

If I had studied harder, I would have passed all my exams.

But I didn't study very hard and so I didn't get those exams.

We wouldn't have had an accident if we had driven more slowly.

We wouldn't have had an accident if we had driven more slowly. But unfortunately, we drove too quickly. We didn't drive slowly, and we had an accident.

I might have got that job.... So that's the modal there, isn't it. I might have got that job. So that puts it into the past tense. I didn't get the job. But,

I might have got that job if I had worn a more elegant suit.

When you go for a job interview, it's best to look smart. But I didn't put on that suit. And they didn't choose me because I didn't look very smart. What a shame, I might have got that job...

Wish and if only with the third conditional

With the third conditional, we can use wish and if only. Now we saw that in the second conditional, didn't we? Which talks about well, hypothetical situations in the present or things which are impossible.

If only I had wings, I would fly to the moon.

If only I had wings. I wish I had wings, I would fly to the moon. So that's talking about something that I would like now, that second conditional. Third conditional just talks about situations but in the past,

I never read much when I was a child, as I was always out playing.

I wish I had read more. Well, children should be out playing, shouldn't they really? But perhaps I could have read more. And perhaps I would have learned more as well. Reading is important too, isn't it - when you're a child?

I ate too much curry last night. If only I hadn't eaten that curry. Oooh! It was very spicy! And well, now my tummy hurts. Oh, Yeah. I wish I hadn't eaten so much curry last night.

Okay, well, that was very short, wasn't it? A very short podcast. I wish I had written more material because the podcast was too short! Oh, well. Next one is interesting (Monday 15th Nov '21). It's about mixed conditionals.

Goodbye for now.

Exercise on the third conditional (with modals)...

Exercise on the third conditional (with modal 'would')...