W Will - Norman Mailer a model of Standard English usage? I would look at Raymond Chandler.
Oh my Gawd! A man on television just now said that in England lots of exams were sat this year (the grades have been increasingly inflated over all the years since GCSE was invented, by the way, until almost everyone got an A, so this year the markers did what they were told and got a bit stricter, (A grade proportion one in 200 fewer than last year) so now everyone is horrified, and screaming that it is all so unfair, innit?) My own horror and screaming was on hearing that the exams "were sat". In my day exams were "taken" or "written". But it is true, too, that in my day we lived in dread that our classmates would find out we had first names, or worse what those names were, or that we had parents, so we were a bit of a mess, really, even if we got our grammar and syntax well polished!

Hello Evelyn

You ask for advice: ", i have to make a speech topic about wearing school uniform or not what recomendation they would make?.. if i were prime menister using modals, conditional, passive voice, embedded question and reported speech."

Well, let's try! "If I were prime minister" is a (closed) conditional clause, using a subjunctive verb, 'closed' because you are talking about a situation which is hypothetical, that is, you are not prime minister but if you were, this is what you would have done.

Conditional (open) clause is where it is possible: "If I am right ..." for example, because maybe you are right, and on condition that you are right, then you will do this or that ...

Passive voice is where you talk about what was done to the subject of the sentence: "I was appointed PM" (passive) was done to me, but "I became PM" is active because I did it. The cat sat on the mat is active but the cat was asked to get off the mat is passive. The cat sat (active) but was asked (passive).

Modals? That is another term for mood, so means whether the verb is indicative (fact) or subjunctive (hypothetical), so let us try "If the headmaster (or indeed headmistress) lets us wear what we like on Fridays then ..." that is indicative because it shows you think this is a real possibility. Change this to "If the headmaster (or indeed headmistress) were to let us wear what we like on Fridays then ..." That is subjunctive, because it says you think it won't happen.

"Embedded" question is a puzzle to me, but I think it is what I call an indirect question. A direct question you quote the question: "are you mad?" but indirect you tell us about the question someone asked, like this: "He asked him if he was mad". This is one of the three kinds of reported (or indirect ) speech:

indirect question "He asked him if he was crazy." (Direct: Are you crazy?" - with question mark). Indirect command: "He asked him to open the door". (Direct command: "Open the door." Indirect statement: "He said it was raining". (Direct statement: "It's raining").

Good luck with your speech, and let us know how it goes.

OK, Layman,

the way to get it right is to remember that subjunctive is for 'hypothetical' situations - not factual - and BOTH clauses are subjunctive. otherwise BOTH are indicative (factual). This is called 'sequence of tenses' by some.

So:

1. If I was rude, I apologize. (Maybe I was rude, and if I was, then I apologise.)
2. If I were rude, I apologize. (Plain wrong. This means it would be rude to apologise, and I do apologise because I was rude, but I wasn't, maybe - daft!) 'If I was rude I apologise' - allows the possibility that maybe I was, so I do. 'If I were rude I would ... " means I won't because it would be rude to do so. You have mixed the moods so have not followed the sequence of tenses rule.
3. If I was rude, I would apologize. Suggests maybe I was rude (indicative) but begs the question what second, further condition must first be satisfied before I apologise. If I was rude, I would apologize if only I were a gentleman (subjunctive suggests I do not consider myself a gentleman).
4. If I were rude, I would apologize. This suggests it would be rude to apologise, but I am not rude so I shall not apologise.
5. If I I was rude, I would have apologized. Suggests maybe I was rude, but something else prevented me apologising. Without that further information (introduced, I suggest, by "but" after "apologised", it makes no sense.
6. If I were rude, I would have apologized. This makes sense: someone else might think I should have apologised, but I think it is rude to apologise, so I didn't.
7. If I had been rude, I would have apologized. I didn't apologise because I wasn't (in my view) rude.

Does 'was' refer to the past, and 'were' to a hypothetical situation? Yes.P.s. Hairy wrote previously:

You quote Hairy: "I can't believe that no one has mentioned the fact that the subjunctive is only a mood. It is a matter of whether one would like to sound sophisticated or not.If you want to sound classy, you say "if I were". "
This is nonsense. The subjunctive mood is employed to make it clear that you are talking of hypothetical possibilities. It is like a third dimension. Is the indicative "only" a mood? If we are not allowed moods, then we cannot use verbs, which must be indicative, subjunctive, or imperative (for orders). Without verbs we cannot make sentences. Must we avoid sentences? Of course not! That is why I dismiss out of hand the idea of 'only a mood'. A bit like a car mechanic saying "it's only an engine".
'Classy' has nothing to do with it, unless inverted snobbery compels you to avoid using the subjunctive in case someone realises or thinks you are educated. (In England some people have a problem with 'educated' and 'classy'.)

W Will, I think Jackie's point about "like" in place of "as if", or "as though" has come out a bit mangled in your comments. I am wholly with Jackie on each and every point mentioned here; perhaps in retirement from lucrative employment we could set up an Academie Anglaise and commission some busts of ourselves to put in our Pantheon of the Immortals, once we have sorted out the use of relative pronouns.

W. Will,
I apologise if I have offended you by quoting your use of forms of English which I have then said are not to my liking, and I take aboard the gentle way in which you have phrased your rebuke.
Okay, I wince every time I hear "Brit" or "expat" and feel that just because they are increasingly widely used (which is exactly what I am moaning about) does not mean I should just roll over and say "whatever" or "fair enough, live with it then". British and Briton are handy enough words without needing to drop another syllable, and there have been American bars and English pubs and Irish bars and pubs across the world for a very long time, and I have extensive experience of very many of them across three continents. I very much hope they will continue to stay in business long enough to be there for my next visit. In Bangkok, for example, I recommend Molly Malone's in soi Convent, close by Silom, as a fine Irish bar, well liked by the better sort of farang.
But I did not intend to offend you, as I have said before, only to rail against the dreadful debasement of the English language as so eloquently described elsewhere by Jackie from France. She sums up much of what I have grumbled about in the past, and I agree with everything I have just read from her.

Sorry, Jackie, but to get back to the point of this area of discussion, I should have said "but hey! get used to it, Jackie; 3rd in the world behind two nations with mega-huge populations feels good!" (We are not meant to be talking about Brits and expats, really, it is all meant to be about hey!.)

Odd? Old fashioned? Yes - what's wrong with that?
Scots ... Welsh ... Northern Irish ... er, isn't one missing? Ah yes, the Engs! Scots tenth in medal table, were we an independent nation, Irish really good too, and the Welsh, and the Engs! You ask Who are the Engs? and I say they are the not odd and not old-fashioned word for the English.
It may seem odd and old-fashioned to say the British did well, but get used to it, Jackie; 3rd in the world behind two nations with mega-huge populations feels good!

W Will - not in the slightest personal, no, not at all. British is fine, one of my own passports is indeed a British one. Sometimes I even live in Britain. Nothing against British people at all, sorry if that was the impression given.
My great distaste is for the 'word' Brit, which, like Yank or Frog when intended to denote someone's nationality, is, well, horrible, no matter how affectionately intended. Did American newspapers carry headlines about the Olympics like: " Yanks win lots and lots of medals "? or French ones :" Frogs don't win many medals, do we? " ? So why did British ones do "Brits do really rather well in medals table!" (I paraphrase all these, of course, because I have forgotten what they actually said). To me, 'Brit' ranks on the yuk! scale along with 'expat' which seems to be used to mean British people who are living as foreigners in another country. Nothing wrong with doing that, of course: I'll do it myself if it doesn't stop raining here soon. It's the word itself which grates on the ear like fingernails scraped on the blackboard (or is it chalkboard?). What's wrong with "foreigners" as the mot juste? In Thailand they use the charming term "farangs" which is the same thing, and it is my first choice of word here.
Again, sorry about the wrong impression given, of course nothing personal was intended.

Arthur - you are quite right: if you allow "he was sat" you had might as well also go with "we was sat" which is no worse as it too is in common use. I am wholly in agreement with all the points you have made here, and I am going to change my mind on allowing "he was sat" as passive - I reckon now it is always wrong; the passive is "he was seated (somewhere) by ... (someone)" and "he was sat" is not right, ever. I modify my earlier suggestion that if someone is made to sit somewhere perhaps unwillingly (an with recalcitrant child by nasty teacher) then "he was sat" might convey the sense well enough. It does, but it is not correct. "He was made to sit" is the form to use here, compared with "he was seated by (e.g. the waiter) ..." as the form to use when all parties were happy with the plan.

If we are teaching people English as a second (or indeed third ...) language surely we do our best to teach the correct forms and not the dialect forms we are happy to hear used in demotic conversation. If I am teaching French I don't want to use a textbook which teaches grunts and shrugs and frequent use of "hein?" with which daily conversation is peppered, and the same notion goes for teaching English.

I like "hey" when used as a friendly greeting - the tone of voice makes clear when you mean "hey!" in a "stop thief!" sense.
But "Brit" ? Now that is indeed horrible.