Lawrence
Community Tutor
A question about conditional sentences For this grammar point, I still don't know how to use those four types of conditional sentences confidently. But I don't think native speakers use conditional sentences consciously in real life. I want to know how native speakers deal with this situations in real conversations. I watched a video, in this video a cute says to her parents like this, I want to make this speech for my mom and daddy. If I wasn't born, I won't have a happy family...... In this sentence, the girl use a conditional sentences, but I don't think this little girl know something about conditional sentences.
Oct 16, 2018 8:35 AM
Answers · 4
2
You're probably right. If she is a little girl then she probably made a mistake/doesn't know how to construct conditional sentences. Do native speakers use conditional sentences 'consciously' in real life? Probably not. We don't give a lot of thought to what we say. And, being human, we make mistakes. If we heard a little girl say "If I wasn't born, I won't have a happy family" we would hear the mistake, but we would understand the meaning.
October 16, 2018
@Jonathan, Thanks for your comment here.
October 17, 2018
As a native speaking teacher whose girlfriend is a non-native English teacher I would say that I give no thought at all to choosing which conditional to use in different situations. When I first started teaching I had to consciously learn the form and use of conditional sentences in order to teach them and have what I taught match what is written in the textbooks. However, the distinction into zero, first, second, third and mixed conditional sentences is useful for learners. It might help you to divide them into real/unreal and past/future rather than numbering them. With the real/unreal distinction it also helps for you to ask yourself whether you think the possible event you are talking about is likely or unlikely, possible or impossible. It's also worth remembering that in conversation, nobody will misunderstand you and so nobody will correct you and so to learn successfully you will have to write so that you or someone else can correct the grammar with a focus on conditionals.
October 16, 2018
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