Intermediate grammar exercise (B1 level): wish
English vocabulary practice exercise, intermediate (B1) level
In this exercise you will practise using wish to express hypothesis in the present.
| Expressing hypothesis with wish | |
| We use wish to express a hypothetical situation. When we say I wish, we are saying that we want something which is impossible or which is highly unlikely to happen. | |
| For hypothesis about the present and future we use I wish + past simple. I wish I was/were twenty years younger. I wish I had more time; I’m always so busy. Don’t you wish you could speak a foreign language fluently? |
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| For hypothesis about the past, we use I wish + past perfect. I wish I hadn’t said that. (= 'I regret that I said it.') I wish I’d (I had) studied harder at school. (= 'I regret that I didn’t study harder at school.') |
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Exercise instructions
Choose the correct answer for each of the following.
tais assem - March 25, 2021, 4:58 pm
Question 5. Why I cannot use don’t instead of didn’t?
Joe - May 21, 2021, 2:12 pm
That’s the structure for this grammar rule. Based on the structure shown above; for a hypothesis about the present and future, we use I wish + past simple. The past simple of the verb “To do” is “did”. You have to keep in mind that the exercise you are mentioning (Question 5), has a negative context, therefore have to be “did not” or “didn’t” which is the same, one is the long-form (mostly used in writing and it is more formal) and the other one is the shirt-form (mostly used while speaking)
Anonymous - September 12, 2025, 1:26 pm
Good job doing this educational page, keep the good work and add more functions :v