Past conditional tense usages

Question

Has anyone got any ideas or pointers to materials on how to use past conditional tenses such as: Past progressive conditional : eg. She might be studying Past perfect conditional : eg. She might have studied Past perfect progressive conditional : eg. She might have been studying Most books/materials talk only so far as present conditional (perfect, progressive, perfect progressive) and may be past conditional but not beyond that. Appreciate it

donkadsw · Answer

No takers?

Does anyone know about some good material on how to use conditionals? This topic is confusing the hell out of me - when does one use will, would, might, etc!

mikemcgarry · Answer

Dear donkadsw , I'm happy to help. :-)

First of all, understand that the distinction between " may " and " might " is so arcane that the GMAT will never test it. I guarantee you will not have to know that distinction on any GMAT problem. Similarly, I guarantee you will not have to know perfect forms of the conditional. It's simply not on the test. Period. The whole topic of conditionals is somewhat rare, but it could show up on Sentence Correction in simpler tenses. At Magoosh, among our video lessons, in the Verb Form section, we have a lesson explaining all about conditionals. If you really want a thorough treatment to every grammatical structure you do have to know for GMAT SC, I would recommend checking out Magoosh. Here, for free, is another lesson on another topic, just to give you a sense of them: https://gmat.magoosh.com/lessons/914-the ... rb-mistake I hope this helps, Mike :-)

donkadsw · Answer

Hi Mike, thank you very much for your reply. My whole question about how one can use various forms of conditionals stems from an explanation to a GMATPrep SC given by a popular prep company. The SC question is below. In order to eliminate (incorrect) answer choice (C) through one of the many errors, the prep company says that usage of "would" is incorrect as the rest of the sentence that follows -  as the message is forwarded.. - is in present tense. In that case, what I do not understand is how the usage of "might" in the correct answer choice (D) is correct. Could you kindly clarify in light of this question when one could use "would" and "might"?

In a blow to those  who still harbored the illusion that E-mail exchanges are private, a watchdog group recently uncovered a trick for enabling an interloper to rig an E-mail message so that this person will be privy to any comments that a recipient had added  as the message is forwarded to others or sent back and forth.

(A) who still harbored the illusion that E-mail exchanges are private, a watchdog group recently uncovered a trick for enabling an interloper to rig an E-mail message so that this person will be privy to any comments that a recipient had added
(B) who had still been harboring the illusion that E-mail exchanges are private, a watchdog group recently uncovered a trick for enabling an interloper to rig an E-mail message so that this person was privy to any comments that a recipient might have added
(C) who still were harboring the illusion that E-mail exchanges are private, a watchdog group recently uncovered a trick enabling an interloper to rig an E-mail message so that this person is privy to any comments that a recipient would add
(D) still harboring the illusion that E-mail exchanges are private, a watchdog group recently uncovered a trick that enables an interloper to rig an E-mail message so that this person will be privy to any comments that a recipient might add
(E) still harboring the illusion that E-mail exchanges had been private, a watchdog group recently uncovered a trick that will enable an interloper to rig an E-mail message so that this person was privy to any comments that a recipient might add

Past conditional tense usages

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