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Confusion Between the Future Simple and Present Continuous

Some thoughts on the use of will and the differences between the present continuous and the future simple.

In the present continuous you are always thinking about what is happening now or what will be happening in the near future. This is complicated for the new speaker because he attaches the idea of talking about the future with the future simple tense and word "will." The way to get around the problem is to give an example, which the student can relate to. One that I find useful is expressing a decision that occurs at the time when the person receives a phone call. If the person is busy doing something else when he gets an emergency call and he must then change his mind, he is likely to use the future simple tense. He is likely to say something like, “I'll be there in a moment,” if he has to leave for an emergency. This helps to get the student to understand which situations will use the future and which ones won't.

The simple future is also a good means of predicting what is likely to happen in the future as I have used in the closing sentence of the first paragraph. The first part of the sentence uses the present tense and the second part begins with the interrogative word, "which" that begins a relative clause answering the question "what this will get the student to do". Relative clauses will be discussed later suffice it to say that can use the "will" without the speaker having to make another sentence. "Will" may also be used in the first conditional sentence when talking about something that arises as a consequence of something else. So in the example, “If it rains, I'll put on a raincoat,” putting on the raincoat is something to do as a result of the rain.

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