This post is literally a reading note of How to improve your IELTS Band Score by John R Benford.

Express the future

I see many non-native English speakers, including myself, use "I will" quite a lot, while native speakers don't. Therefore I took this note as a reminder of different ways of expressing the future.

	Way	Example
1	For predictions	China will win the Olympics
2	Decisions made at the moment of speaking	There is someone at the door, I'll go.
3	For plans	I'm going to Europe for my holidays. I'm going fishing tomorrow.
4	Visible evidence	Look at those black clouds, it's going to rain.
5	For arrangements or timetables	I catch the 6 o'clock bus tonight. I'm joining a new company next week.

Use conditionals

"If" + tense is always confusing to me, as what I learned in schools says I should use past tense for "if" + hypothetical situations, but in reality I do see people use present tense. Fortunately the book has a passage specifically for this.

	Conditional	Example
1	For stating something that's known to be true	If students don't study at all, they fail their exams.
2	For predictions	If you eat too much, you will get fat.
3	For hypothetical or imaginary situations	If I was rich, I would travel around the world.
4	For expressing regrets about the past	If I had known, I would have gone.

Keep in mind that the clauses above can be inverted, e.g "You will get fat if you eat too much."

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1. Kex @ 2013-11-19 19:54:41 +0800:

   Thanks for sharing, it helps a lot.

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