WILL, GOING TO and present continuous

Improve your English today at ANGLOPOD.COM. Hi everyone, I’m Dan and today we’re going to look at how we talk about the future in English. In fact, that last sentence includes one of our examples, GOING TO. So how do we really talk about the future in English?

The first thing to note is that English does not really have a future tense. We have a present tense, a past tense, and a perfect tense, but we don’t really have a future tense.

What I mean is we don’t change the verbs in English to express the future as many other languages do. So we have to add other words to a verb to express the future. The most common words we use are WiLL and GOING TO, but we also use the present continuous when we want to talk about the future.

Firstly, we use GOING TO a lot when talking about the future. I’m GOING TO do this, I’m GOING TO do that. This sounds like you’re sure, you have decided, you have made a plan. For example, “I’m GOING TO spend my holiday in Mexico this year”. So we use GOING TO for a plan or intention.

However, we use the present continuous to talk about the future when there is a definite arrangement, for example: “I AM FLYING to Mexico next week”. This is an arrangement because you have bought a ticket. This is not just GOING TO happen, but it IS HAPPENING, so we use the present continuous in this case to talk about a future arrangement.

As you can see in this example, the present continuous doesn’t really express the future, but the words ‘next week’. They are very important so we know when this thing is happening. So that’s why we don’t really have a future tense in English!

Finally, let’s look at an example with WILL. A lot of people think that WILL is the future in English, but really the modal verb WILL is used to mean many different things and so it is overused by students when talking about the future.

A lot of students say I WILL do this or I WILL do that, but really this is wrong. It sounds a bit strange. That’s why we use it with other words like MAYBE or PROBABLY. So for example: “Maybe I WILL do this”, “I WILL probably do that”.

We tend to use WILL just to make predictions about the future or when we’re not sure about the future. We also use it when we’re still thinking about the future.

So, now you know how to talk about the future, I hope you are GOING TO go to ANGLOPOD.COM to practise your English. Good luck and see you soon!

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