Imagine for a moment that you
and I are chatting and I ask, what are you doing this weekend? You know,
that I'm asking you about the future. And so I'm curious, how would
you answer that question? Would you say something like I
will go shopping or I will visit my family on Sunday? Those two sentences are
certainly grammatically correct. And when you first
started to learn English, I'm sure that you learned to use
will to talk about the future. But here's the problem. When
we talk about future plans, like what we're going
to do on the weekend, English speakers don't
really use will. In fact, there are actually four different ways
that we can talk about the future in English, whether we're talking
about future plans, intentions, expectations, wishes, or predictions. And in most of those situations,
we don't use the word will. If that surprises you, you're not alone. And the good news is
after this lesson today, you will know exactly how to
talk about the future in English, in a variety of situations, you'll be able to easily and
naturally answer questions. Like what are you going
to do this weekend? What are your vacation
plans for the summer? What are you doing tonight after work? What do you think you'll do
this year for the holidays? What are your company's sales
predictions for the next year? Again, all of those questions, focus on the future and you'll know
exactly to how to answer each one. I'm Annemarie was Speak Confident English. This is exactly where you want to be
every week to get the confidence you want for your life and work in English. My number one goal is to make
sure that you feel comfortable, knowledgeable, and confident in
everything you do in English, whether it's your
vocabulary pronunciation, or as we're focused on
today, your grammar use. [Inaudible]. As I mentioned earlier, we
have four different ways. We can talk about the future in English.
So for the remainder of this lesson, we'll look at four different categories
or situations. I'll give you examples, conversation questions, and sample answers to
highlight how we talk about the future or which grammar
tense we may be using. The first area we're going to focus
on our future scheduled events and timetables. For example, think
about how you get to work every day. Do you take a bus, a Metro,
maybe a train. If you do, what time does your train leave on Friday? I'm not talking about last week. I'm talking about this
coming Friday in the future. What time does your bus or train leave, or let's imagine that you have a
conference coming up for work and you're supposed to do a
presentation. Next Thursday, I might ask you what time is your
presentation scheduled for on Thursday? These questions are focused on
scheduled events. For example, a scheduled presentation at
a conference and timetables. For example, the times that trains are
scheduled to leave or the Metro, a bus or a flight, and those cases, you typically cannot change the
schedule. The times are fixed. And when we talk about those future
scheduled times or timetables, we use the present simple. My presentation on Thursday
starts at 10:00 AM. My flight to Barcelona next
week takes off in the afternoon. In every one of those sentences, I'm using the present simple to talk
about a future event that is scheduled or with a fixed timetable. We use the same pattern when we
talk about medical appointments, dental appointments, movie
times, restaurant reservations. What time a store opens or
closes or a schedule of events at a conference in all those situations, we use the simple present to talk
about those future events. Now, before we go onto the second category, if you want more examples of how the
present simple is used to talk about these future events, I recommend visiting this lesson on
the Speak Confident English website. In the lesson there, I have multiple examples for you
to follow and practice questions you can use as well. And now let's
move on to category number two, future plans and arrangements.
Let me ask you a question. What are you doing this weekend? Go
ahead. Get your calendar out. Take a look. See if you have anything planned for
the weekend or what if I asked you, what are you doing next weekend?
What about the weekend after that? What do you have planned? What do you
have planned for your summer vacation? When I ask about future
plans or arrangements, what that means is that
you've made a decision. You've made a decision to spend time
doing something over the weekend, or you've made a decision about where
you're going for your summer vacation. Perhaps you've already made reservations,
purchased tickets. And so on. When we talk about our future
plans and arrangements, again, decisions that we've made
and we've already started
the preparations to do them, we use the present continuous
to talk about those future plans. So let's go back to that question. What are you doing this weekend
in answering that question? You would use the present
continuous. I'm going to the movies. I'm taking my family to the park. We're
spending the weekend at the beach. If I know that you've already made
decisions for your summer vacation. When I ask you about your plans, you'll say we're going to Spain or
we're spending several days hiking in the mountains. If I'm trying to
schedule something with you, for example, if I say, do you have time
for a class tomorrow at two, you might take a look at
your calendar and say, no. I'm meeting with a client
tomorrow at that time. As you can see in all of those examples, when we're talking about
future plans or arrangements, we use the present continuous, if you want more examples so
that you can see that pattern, practice it and feel more
comfortable with it. Again, I recommend going to the Speak
Confident English website, visiting this lesson to
review all of those examples. And now category number three, talking about future intentions
and predictions with evidence. In the last examples we talked about
plans or arrangements that you've made. There's been a decision and
you've already taken action steps, such as making a reservation
or purchasing tickets. However, sometimes there are
things that we want to do. We have the intention to do, but
we haven't made arrangements yet. For example, most of us at
the start of the new year, we'll probably say something like
I'm going to start working out again, after the new year.
There's no specific date. There are no specific arrangements, but it is something that you
want to do after the new year. It's a future intention right now. Many of us are more than one
year into the COVID-19 pandemic. And we are desperate to travel. We have a lot of intentions
travel plans that we want to make, but we haven't done it yet.
We haven't booked any tickets. We haven't reserved any hotel
rooms because we're just not sure. Or maybe it's not possible yet. But when we talk about those
future intentions, we might say, as soon as it's safe to travel, I'm
going to book a flight to Spain. Or as soon as it's safe, I'm
going to travel to Europe. As soon as I can, I'm going to
visit some friends in Brazil. What do you notice about
all those example sentences? I'm going to travel to Europe. I'm
going to visit friends in Brazil. I'm going to start working
out after the new year. The sentence structure I'm using
is going to plus the infinitive verb, going to start, going to travel, going to visit. We use this same structure when
we talk about predictions with evidence. Let me explain
what I mean by that. If I look out my window, I might see huge storm clouds coming in. It isn't raining yet, but I can see based on the clouds and
maybe the weather forecast that it's going to rain soon. So if I'm with a coworker
at the office, I might say, don't forget to take your umbrella when
you leave, it's going to rain soon. I'm making a future
prediction based on evidence. Here's another example.
If you work in sales, you probably have sales targets for
every quarter. Maybe even every month, if things are going particularly well, you might make a future
prediction and say, if we continue at this rate, we're definitely going to hit our sales
targets before the end of the quarter. Again, you're using the current situation
as evidence and making a future prediction. And as you can see, we're using that going
to plus the infinitive. All right, now that we've talked about
scheduled events and timetables, where we use the present. Simple to
talk about those future events, plans, and arrangements with the present, continuous intentions and
predictions with evidence using, going to in the infinitive
verb, you might be wondering, do we ever use will in English for
anything related to the future? We do. This is our fourth
category. In this last category, we're going to talk about
predictions without evidence, immediate decisions
and factual statements. Let me give you some example
questions to help illustrate that. What if I ask you, what do you
think life will be like in 20 years? With that question, I'm asking you to
make some kind of a future prediction, but 20 years is a really
long time from now. And we really don't have enough
evidence to accurately predict the future in 20 years. So we're making a
prediction without evidence. So our response to that
question would include will my prediction is cars will fly and
everyone will live in a glass house. It's simply my prediction
based on nothing. I have no evidence of any of
that. I'm just giving my thoughts. Here's another question. As an example, do you think it will rain while we're on
vacation next month a month is a really long time for a weather
forecast. So again, you're going to be making some
predictions without any real evidence. And now let's talk about
factual statements. If someone's having a terrible
day, one way to respond is to say, I'm so sorry, you're having
a bad day, but thankfully, tomorrow the sun will rise
and the day will go on. You cannot change the rising
of the sun. It will happen. Time will pass. These
are factual statements. And when we talk about those
facts in the future, we use, well, here's another example. Imagine that you're going to a conference
where you had to purchase a ticket to attend. And do you know that every ticket
for the conference was sold? It was sold out. So when you
arrive at the conference, you might tell a colleague that
you want to arrive early for the lecture because you know, it
will be difficult to find a seat. That's the fact, it will be difficult to find a seat
because the conference is sold out. And now finally, our last situation for using will
is when we've made an immediate decision in the moment
of speaking. For example, let's say that you and a coworker
are preparing for a meeting. You're in a conference room,
getting everything ready, waiting for everyone to arrive. And your coworker realizes that she
forgot a document in her office. It's a document that you need for the
meeting. And she says, Oh my gosh, I forgot the document. It's in my
office. And you say, I'll get it. I will get it. I'll get it.
In that moment of speaking, you made an immediate decision and
you're using will in your response. And let's say that while
you're at the meeting, you realize you're going to get home late
and you will not be able to take care of dinner for your family.
Your meeting is going long. There's a big discussion happening. And
you know, you won't get home in time. So you send a text message
to your partner, your spouse, letting them know that
you're going to be late. You won't be able to get dinner ready and
they respond with I'll take care of it or all get dinner ready
again. I will take care of it. I will get dinner ready. The decision
is getting made in that moment. And with that, you have four different ways of
talking about the future in English and doing it naturally. So now
it's time for you to practice. I have four questions.
I'm going to ask you. And I want you to think about what you've
learned in this lesson and use that information to help you answer these
questions. Question number one, what are you doing this
weekend? Question number two. What time does your favorite coffee shop
open tomorrow? Question number three. What are you going to do for fun next
summer? And finally, question number four. What do you think life
will be like in 20 years? You can share your answers to those
questions with me and practice everything that you've learned in this lesson.
In the comment section below. Again, if you want more examples of how to
use the present, simple, the present, continuous going to plus
the infinitive verb, and will for talking about the future, you can visit this lesson at the
Speak Confident English website. If you found this lesson useful
to you, I would love to know. And you can tell me in two
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time for your Confident English lesson.
