Reading and Use of English Part 6 - B2- Grammar focus: Conditionals 1

You are going to read a magazine article about a young woman who works in a nursery school.

Six sentences have been removed from the article.

Choose from the sentences A–G the one which fits each gap (1–6).

There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.

Nursery school teacher Sarah Oliver tells how a chance meeting changed her life. I really enjoy my job, it makes me feel good at the beginning of every week, because I love working with small children and I enjoy the challenges that arise. But there was a time when I thought I would never have that sort of career. I wasn’t very good at school: I mean, I didn’t like studying much, so I didn’t try very hard. I thought I was the sort of person who couldn’t do school work, I suppose. 1 __ But in my final term I started thinking what I might do and I realised that I didn’t have much to offer. If I’d worked harder, I would have had better grades, but it was too late. I just accepted that I wasn’t the type to have a career.

Then I thought, well, I’ve spent every holiday for the past five years helping my mum – I’ve got two brothers and a sister, all much younger than me. 2 __ Their father worked abroad and their mother had some high-powered job in an insurance company. I did most of the housework and I had a lot of responsibility for the children although I was only sixteen.

The problems began really when I agreed to live in, so that I would be there if my boss had to go out for business in the evening. What was supposed to happen was, if I had to work extra hours one week, she’d give me time off the next. But unfortunately, it didn’t often work out. 3 __ I felt trapped, because if I walked out, there wouldn’t be anyone to look after them.

Anyway, one Sunday I was in the park with them, while their parents were on yet another business trip, and I met a girl called Megan I used to be at school with. 4 __ I was telling her how I loved the kids but hated the job and she said, ‘If you want to work with children, you ought to do a course and get a qualification.’

I thought you couldn’t do courses if you hadn’t done all sorts of exams at school, but she persuaded me to phone the local college and they were really helpful. My experience counted for a lot and I got on a part-time course. 5 __ I was really short of money and I even had to get an evening job as a waitress for a while. But it was worth it in the end.

Now I’ve got a full-time job. Most of the children in this school come from families where there are problems like unemployment or poor housing. 6 __ The children benefit, but also the parents. It gives them time to sort things out, go for training or job interviews, and so on. I’ll always be grateful to Megan. If I hadn’t bumped into her, I would have stayed on where I was, getting more and more fed up

Grammar focus task

 Without looking back at the text, match the beginnings and endings of these extracts.