Interestingly, not all languages treat verb tenses the same way. In English, the ending on a verb communicates what tense it’s in. The verb walks communicates not only how many people completed the action (it’s singular), but also when it occurred. Generally speaking, verb tenses identify the time period when an action occurs. In the sentences the boy walks and the girl ran, the words walks and ran are the verbs.ĭid you also recognize that walks is in the present tense, or that ran is in the past tense? Whether you did or didn’t, we’re here to review verb tenses with you and also astound you with the fact that there are 12-count them, 12-verb tenses in all! By thinking about the basic meaning of will and how it can be applied to different situations, you get a better sense of how it works, can use it in a wider range of situations and even understand the nuance of the many sentence patterns we use when we talk about the future in English.If you’re familiar with basic English grammar, we bet you can describe a verb and perhaps name a tense or two. You need to think about the meaning of your words and how a listener will interpret them. I think that communicating is more than simply reproducing language from memory, it involves creative expression. Do you want say a few memorised patterns and phrases for specific situations, or do you want to communicate your thoughts? However, once your level improves, your goals change. When asking them about the near future, practice structures such as “What are you doing tomorrow?” The first step is to get used to how sentences are typically used. This helps them become familiar with how will is used, and the explanation is presented accurately so it can be expanded upon into other uses involving options and possibilities. We can also look at simple predictions, for example the weather. To make things clear for beginners, we can say “ will is often used when making decisions about the future”, and practice situations where they have to make decisions. Ok, so I don’t think it is right to say “the future tense is formed with will” or “ will is a future tense marker”. This always seemed strange to me because when I think about talking simply about the future, I think that I typically use am/are/is -ing (the present progressive/continuous) as in conversation (1) above.Īccording to the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the British National Corpus (BNC), the News On Web Corpus (NOW), the Corpus of American Soap Operas (SOAP) and Google books, the most common way is ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ This is no surprise because many English Language Teaching (ELT) resources teach will as the “simple future”. But some learners I have spoken to say that (2) is better, or are unsure. Do you want to come?Įvery highly proficient English speaker I have spoken to agrees that (1) is more natural. Do you want to come?Ī: We’ll have a barbecue. I’ve asked many English speakers which conversation they think is more natural:Ī: We’re having a barbecue. These sentences are grammatically correct and useful, but they are NOT asking about the near future in the most common way. Some people may say that the future question is ‘What will you do tomorrow?’ or ‘What are you going to do tomorrow?’ (considering will and be going to as future tense markers). When we ask someone about these days we usually ask in the following way: PAST We can simplify the idea of past, present and future into three days: yesterday, today (now) and tomorrow.
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