zero conditional, First conditional and Second conditional

This subject is driving me batty or is it baddy? Anywho, I am living in Mexico and the school system`s English program is a not so funny joke. Even the textbooks published by MacMillan are riddled with grammatical errors and laughable misprints. But, the real problem is this unending fixation of conditionals. Zero, first and second conditionals are what they are called. Help! Do these animals exist? If so, educate me. I know, what they are when they are being used. I just did not know that they had a label and that they carried more weight than subject verb agreement.