Plans and arrangements

Communicating your Plans and Arrangements

Look at the following sentences. Which ‘tense’ do we use for talking about our plans and arrangements?

I’m having dinner with John tonight.
I’m catching up with Kelly tomorrow.
Next week I’m heading off to Berlin for a few days.
I’m finally seeing that film tonight.

As you can see, we use the Present Continuous (or ‘present progressive’) when we refer to our plans. This confuses some students because they were taught that the future is either ‘WILL’ or ‘GOING TO’. It’s not!

Second, textbooks often say it’s ‘present continuous for the future’, which gets students to think English is chaotic with its rules and exceptions.

Actually, if you look at when we use the present continuous you’ll see that using it for your future plans is