student asking question

How is this sentence different from "I don't think she likes that"?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

Good question! "I don't think she'd like that" here uses the conditional "would" in the contraction "she'd". This expresses an imaginary event that hasn't happened, and in this case it means that if it were to happen, she probably wouldn't like it. One the other hand, "I don't think she likes it" means that from past experience, she probably doesn't like something, because it has already happened before. So saying "I don't think she'd like that" expresses more of a hypothetical idea.

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