hi welcome to go natural English
I'm your American English teacher Gabby
here today to help you with English
grammar the last few episodes we have
focused on conditional tenses and today
we are completing our series for English
conditional tenses talking about the
third conditional so this is going to be
quick and clear short and sweet because
we only use the third conditional for
one thing so I'm going to share how you
make the third conditional tense the
structure what you need in the sentence
in order to form it and when we use it
for what reason do we use it and I'm
going to share some examples that will
help to illustrate the third conditional
tense for you so if you want to improve
your English fluency hang on until the
end of this lesson because I'm going to
share a free resource with you that can
help you a lot okay so let's jump right
in the third conditional tense is formed
by using if like we do for other
conditional tenses then the past perfect
tense and then would have plus the past
participle maybe all of these past
perfect and past participle all of these
things sound a bit confusing well it
doesn't have to be confusing at all I
suggest that you practice a lot and get
used to forming this structure again it
is if plus the past perfect and then the
second part of the sentence is would
have plus the past participle so the
more you practice the more familiar you
will become with this tense and how to
structure it and it will be almost like
automatic for you to create third
conditional tense
tenses okay so when do we use this in
what situation this is the tense you use
when you are dreaming about the past
what would have been so we use the third
conditional to talk about past events
that did not happen but talking about or
imagining what could have been so kind
of an alternate reality so think about
your regrets or things that you wish
could have been different past
situations that did not happen but you
want to talk about what if they had
happened so this requires a little bit
of imagination let's look at some
examples if I had studied harder I would
have received better grades or I would
have gotten better grades it's very
common to hear native speakers using
gotten instead of received it's just a
bit more common if I had lived longer
for more time in Japan I would have
become more fluent in Japanese if we had
taken the subway and not driven our car
we would not have hit traffic
on the way to the meeting but we did hit
traffic and now we're late we can also
use the third conditional not only with
would have but also with could have or
should have I want to stick in this
lesson too would have but we'll look in
another lesson more at how to use could
have or should have now I'd like to
invite you to leave an example of your
own third conditional talking about
something that didn't happen in the past
but you want to talk about what
would have happened if the past was
different if the past were different
that's another point that I wanted to
mention often the native English
speakers will incorrectly use was
instead of were and yes I'm admitting
that I just made a mistake in English
but it is so overwhelmingly common that
I want you to know that many if not most
native speakers do say was instead of
were when they're using conditionals for
example in the second conditional which
I talked about in the last lesson and
you can watch by clicking right up there
I talked about using the structure if I
were you
for example if I were you I would leave
a comment with your own example a lot of
native speakers will say if I was you
and no it's not correct but yes it's
very common so this is an example of
when something that's incorrect is
actually more common than the correct
way YouTube family leave a comment with
your own example of the third
conditional thanks so much for watching
now I want to share a free resource that
will help you to improve your fluency
fast in English you want to go to
gonaturalenglish.com slash free to get a
free sample of the popular audio ebook
the English fluency formula YouTube
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right now and don't miss another lesson
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month thanks again and I'll see you soon
in the next lesson bye for now