From the room, last lesson
Six sentences taken down during the counterfactual rounds. Five are form errors. One is perfectly correct and is still the wrong sentence.
Six sentences. One problem each.
1. If only the letter would have arrived on the Saturday.
2. I wish she will answer the email.
3. I wish I would prepare properly for these things.
4. If only I know what she meant.
5. If I was you, I would have said something.
6. I wish I were a more organised person. — you mean the Thursday you forgot to send the file
The finding
Borrowed from the clause next door
The commonest error in this whole area is not a gap in a rule. It is a rule borrowed from next door.
Look at a third conditional: If I had known, I would have said something. Two clauses, both unreal, both about the same non-existent afternoon, and they feel identical from the inside. Only one of them takes would have. Put it in the other and you get if I would have known — which is why that error is so stubborn, and why correcting it with “that is just wrong” never sticks. It is not random. It is a perfectly sensible generalisation from a neighbour eight words away.
The same borrowing produces I wish I would have told her. Wish takes the same unreal past as the if-clause, so the past perfect is the only option: I wish I had told her. Once you see the two slots as one family — if-clause and wish-clause on one side, result clause on the other — there is a single thing to remember rather than three.
Then there is an error of a different kind, and it is the one this unit actually cares about. I wish I were a more organised person is flawless English. It is also, very often, not what the speaker means: what they mean is that they did not send a file on a particular Thursday. The sentence is correct and it is about the wrong thing, and nothing will ever flag it, because there is nothing to flag.
The repair for that one is the conversion you practised in Lesson 4, and it has a test attached. If your wish has no date in it, ask whether one could be found. Sometimes the honest answer is no, and the lament stands. Usually there is a Thursday in there somewhere.
Three questions.
1. Why is if I would have known such a persistent error?
2. Which slots take the unreal past, and which takes would have?
3. What is wrong with I wish I were a more organised person?
Five errors, and where the stress falls
What goes wrong, and what it does to the sentence
| Error | Example | Repair, and why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · would have in the wrong slot | I wish I had told her. If I had known… Would have belongs only in the result clause. This one form is the single commonest written error in the area. | |
| 2 · will for would | I wish she would answer. Will predicts; the sentence is a complaint, and complaints take would. | |
| 3 · would with your own subject | I wish I prepared properly — or could prepare, or, most honestly, stop wishing and decide. You cannot accuse yourself of refusing something you control. | |
| 4 · The missing step back | If only I knew. One step back for a present state, two for a past event. Present tense after wish never happens. | |
| 5 · A condition where a moment was meant | I wish I were a more organised person. | Grammatically perfect, and usually the wrong sentence. Find the date: I wish I had sent the file on the Thursday. |
And one that is only half an error. If I was you is heard everywhere in speech and is wrong in writing; the advice formula is fixed as if I were you.
Where the stress falls, and what it changes. This is the half of the unit that only exists out loud.
If ONLY I’d known. — only takes the stress, and the phrase carries a fall-rise. Said flat, it stops sounding like a regret and starts sounding like a condition.
I wish I’d TOLD him. — the regret is about not telling.
I wish I’d told HIM. — you told somebody, and it was the wrong person.
I wish I HAD. — full, stressed, uncontracted: a contradiction of somebody who has just said you did not care.
Ordinary regrets contract: I wish I’d, if only I’d. A stressed had is a contrast, so using it by default makes every sentence sound like an argument.
Use the word in capitals to form a word that fits the gap. All eight belong to the vocabulary of speculation and regret.
- The entire account rests on pure . SPECULATE
- Her tone was openly , which surprised everybody. REGRET
- The explanation offered is not remotely . PLAUSIBLE
- He described the near miss with some . AMUSE
- The decision looks obvious only . RETROSPECT
- There is no either way, and there never will be. PROVE
- A claim of that size is simply . TEST
- She was praised for her in raising it eighteen months early. FORESEE
Four questions.
1. Which slot takes would have?
2. Where does the stress fall in if only I’d known?
3. What does I wish I’d told HIM claim?
4. Your wish has no date in it. What do you do?
Two slots, and a date
Eight gaps. Choose the form that fits what the writer means.
I have told this story so often that I no longer entirely trust it. If I that the shop closed at four rather than six, I left the house an hour earlier, and none of the rest of it would have happened. That is the version I tell.The truer version is that I knew perfectly well and left late anyway. I say otherwise, and I have, for eleven years. If only I honest about it at the time; the whole thing would have taken one conversation instead of a decade.My sister still me straight, which is fair, and I bring it up quite so often, which is not. I the sort of person who tells things straight the first time. That is a lament, and I notice that the specific version — I the truth in the kitchen on the Sunday — is a great deal harder to write down.
Eight sentences. Seven need work; one is correct as written.
1. I wish I would have gone to the funeral.
2. If I would have left earlier, none of this would have happened.
3. I wish they will stop sending me these reminders.
4. I wish I would go to bed earlier.
5. If only I have her number.
6. If I was in your position, I would say nothing.
7. I wish I had rung her that Sunday. — correct as written
8. She wishes she would have said something at the time.
Three regrets, three ways
Task card · Speaking · Pairs · 10 minutes
Three regrets each, said aloud — and then said again with the stress somewhere else, so you can hear the sentence change meaning underneath you.
Five minutes each. Your partner says what changed; you do not explain it.
- Write three regrets. At least one of them must have a date in it. If none of them does, that is the finding, not a failure.
- Say each one three times, stressing a different word: the verb, the object, and then the auxiliary. Your partner says out loud what each version claims.
- Say your if only flat, with no stress on only — then properly. Both of you say which one sounds like a regret.
- Finish with the conversion. Take any regret that named a condition and find the date inside it. Say the new sentence twice.
The contraction is the default. I wish I’d told him is what an ordinary regret sounds like. A full, stressed had is a contradiction — it answers somebody who has just claimed you did not care — so producing it by default makes every regret sound like the middle of an argument you are losing.
What the stress moved
Two questions.
1. What happened when you moved the stress?
2. How many of your three regrets had a date in them to start with?
Next door, and the date
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. Where can would have go?
2. Your wish is grammatically perfect and names no occasion. What now?
Next. Three hundred and forty words about something that did not happen — written, where a lament can sit on the page for years without anybody asking it for a date.