hi everyone welcome back to my channel learn academic english you may know that i have a series
of grammar shorts short videos about grammar on my channel and today i'm continuing that series
with a quick lesson about should inversion to make conditionals so let's talk for a moment about the
word should you know that in english should is a modal verb that means that we use the modal verb
plus a second verb in the base form and we use should to give advice for example if you ask me
what can i do to improve my english i can say well you should watch tv in english or you
should read in english for 10 minutes a day i'm giving advice when i use the modal verb should
but there's another way to use the verb should and it has a completely different meaning this is an
advanced grammar topic it's very useful if you're living in an english-speaking country or spending
a lot of time with english maybe at school or with your job because we use this grammar a lot
in formal situations by the way don't forget to give this video a like
and subscribe and leave a comment if you find it helpful so let's get into the grammar of should
for conditionals again the word should has two uses you can use it to give advice that's the
more common way or you can use it in place of if so first of all for should inversion
let's talk about what inversion means english has a few inversion rules and inversion means that we
flip the order of the subject and the helping verb or the modal verb there are some other times that
we do this the most common one is when we ask a yes no question like did you go to the party
we invert the subject and the helping verb so for this use of should we're going to use inversion
where we're going to flip the order of the modal verb should and the subject of the sentence
and we use this in zero or first conditionals and we'll talk about those in just a second
and we want to remember that this is formal that we don't use this in conversation with friends
but it's very common in more formal situations for example if you read the newspaper or if
you listen to the news you can often hear this grammar so first of all let's look at the zero
conditional what is the zero conditional you know this conditional because it's the first form where
we talk about something that happens regularly and we use the simple present tense in both clauses
for example if i have time i do yoga on saturdays okay so notice that both verbs are in the simple
present and what does this mean this means if i have time every time i do yoga on saturdays
this is a regular habit that every saturday if i have time i do yoga or we can say when it rains
i prefer to stay indoors notice that for this zero conditional we can also use the word when
and it has the same meaning that if this situation happens or when this situation happens regularly
what is the result i prefer to stay indoors both verbs are in the simple present
okay let's look at the next one which is the first conditional the first conditional is
used to talk about a condition that will have a result in the future for example
if i have time on saturday i will go to the party so which saturday am i talking about here am i
talking about every saturday no i'm talking about a specific saturday that is coming in the future
notice that even though we're talking about the future because saturday is in the future we use
simple present tense and that's just the rule with these conditional dependent clauses or
if climate change worsens there may be wars so notice here that we can also use a modal verb
instead of will or be going to to talk about the future what may happen in the future okay so now
let's do the should inversion so we're going to follow a few easy steps to do that we're going to
take out the word if or in this case we have when and then we're going to add the word should okay
and it looks like a question because the modal verb comes first but it's not a question it is
a conditional sentence and then because we're using the modal verb we have to double check
the main verb to make sure that it's in the base form so let's double check should i have time
okay that's okay should it rains okay now we have to make a change this verb needs to be in the base
form so we're going to take out that s should i have time okay and should climate change worsens
uh oh we need to change this to the base form so let's take out that s
okay now let's read the new sentences that we have should i have time i'll do yoga on saturdays
should it rain i prefer to stay indoors so to be honest with you these sound a little
bit strange because as i mentioned before we almost always use should inversion in formal
situations these are not really formal so these do sound a little bit strange but they are correct
next should i have time on saturday i will go to the party
should climate change worsen there may be wars so these sentences might sound a little weird
to you because they are not as common and they are tricky because we have this inversion it
sounds like a question but it's not the meaning of should is different from what you're used to
but this is very common so before we stop i wanted to mention that because these are
usually used in formal situations it's very common to hear it when someone is giving you directions
for example should you require assistance please visit our office
or should you need more information feel free to call before i go don't forget that it's very
important for you to practice the grammar in order for you to learn it and get better
so in the description box below or in the comment below that i'm going to leave i'm
going to include a few examples of conditionals and i want you to try to practice by changing them
using the should inversion and you can leave your answers in the comments below and i will give you
feedback take care see you soon and don't forget to let me know if you have questions