General English Level 6 V 3
UNIT 03 Changing jobs TOPIC 02 Changing work
LANGUAGE FOCUS 04 The third conditional
How to say that things might have been different ...
Carol and Rani say:
Carol:
… if I'd been better at maths, I would have studied economics.

(Carol wasn't good at maths, so she didn't study economics.)

Rani:
… if my family had been poor , I wouldn't have got a good education.

(Rani's family wasn't poor, so she did get a good education.)

We use a third conditional sentence to talk about an imaginary or unlikely situation in the past and to describe its probable result.

To talk about the imaginary or unlikely situation, we use if + past perfect .
To describe theprobable result, we use would/wouldn't have + past participle .
We separate the two clauses with a comma.

Bert says:
Bert:
If I had studied harder at school, I could have done law.

(Bert didn't study hard at school, so he didn't study law.)

We can also use could have , may have and might have if the result is less certain.

If I had studied harder, I could have been a professor.
had been born rich, I would have inherited a lot of money.
he had married, he wouldn't have travelled as much.

Examples

1 Read the examples.
2 Listen to the examples.
3 Practise saying each example. Use the Pause button.
If I had worked harder, I might have saved a lot of money by now.
If I had stayed at school longer, I might have a better job now.
If I had known about the other job, I wouldn't have taken this job.
If he had seen you at the play, he would have said hello.

Now go to 05 PRACTICE The third conditional.