Lesson 78: Unit 132 - Wishes About The Past

About this lesson

In this lesson you will learn how to express regrets and wishes about past events in English. You will master the use of the structure “I wish + past perfect” to talk about things you wish had happened differently. The practice covers typical situations in which we express regret about mistakes we have made or opportunities we have missed. You will work with an authentic text and plenty of real-life sentences to consolidate the new grammar.

40 minutes

What you'll learn

• Understand and use the structure 'I wish + past perfect' for wishes about the past.
• Transform facts about the past into sentences with 'I wish' that express regret.
• Recognise the difference between a fact and an unreal wish about the past.
• Build the negative forms 'I wish I hadn't...' and the positive forms 'I wish I had...'.
• Use the structure in real everyday situations.
• Understand conditional sentences such as 'If I hadn't been so sick, I would have gone to the party.'

Lesson vocabulary

• soaked to the skin I was soaked to the skin after I had been walking for an hour.
• heavily When I went out, it was raining heavily.
• immediately When I arrived home, I went to bed immediately.
• awful I had an awful headache on Saturday morning.
• high temperature I had an awful headache, high temperature and felt sick.
• GP (general practitioner) I couldn't even get up to phone my GP.
• invitation I was angry because I had an invitation for a cocktail party.
• fridge I also wanted to go shopping because my fridge was empty.
• seatbelt I wish I had worn the seatbelt.
• alarm clock I didn't fix my alarm clock and I woke up late.
• chairperson I wish I had been elected chairperson.
• competition I wish I had won the competition.
• accept I wish I had accepted the job offer.
• waste I wish I hadn't wasted so much money on new bags and shoes.
• regret I regret what happened — I wish I had taken a taxi.

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In other languages: Български