
So it’s undoubtedly a structure that’s worth learning and practicing. Our boss will be really pleased if we get this contract.Īs you can see, the first conditional is used in many different situations, both in and out of the workplace. If you’re hungry, help yourself to whatever you want. If she does well in this interview, she’ll get the job. Your teacher can help if you don’t understand something. If we don’t win today, we’ll be out of the competition. The structure is: we start with should or had followed by the first clause, a comma (,) and the second clause. To make an inversion in conditional sentences we first omit the if.When we use should, the conditional sentence is a real conditional, which means that we talk about a present choice and its future consequence.

If you practice frequently, you’ll learn quickly. Inversion is used in conditional sentences to make sentences more formal. Here are some other examples of the first conditional: We’ll be pleased if the client will accept our offer. We’ll be pleased if the client accepts our offer. Will can only come in the other part of the sentence. The important thing to remember with the first conditional is that we can never use will near if. If it rains, wear your waterproof clothing. I won’t have to do this exam again if I pass it.Īs an alternative to will, It’s possible to complete the second part of a first conditional sentence with a modal verb or an imperative. Like all conditionals we can also invert this structure: If I pass this exam, I won’t have to do it again.

To make a sentence in the first conditional, we use, And if it happens, the second part is 100% certain. There is a 50% chance that the first part of this sentence (the action following ‘if’) will happen. If I miss the train, I’ll take the next one. The first conditional is used to express the future consequence of a realistic possibility now or in the future. For example, In which situations can we use it and why? When to use the first conditional The first conditional is one of four types of hypothetical sentence in English, and it is probably the most commonly used.
