Plans and arrangements

I must hurry up, my plane __________ at 3.30

will leave

leaves

is going to leave

Today we finish school at 2, I think I _________ basketball after

am going to play

am playing

will play

You don’t have any wine for your dinner? Don’t worry, I _______ some

will buy

buy

am buying

__________ anything interesting on TV this weekend?

Are you watching

Are you going to watch

Plans & Arrangements

Afew of my students had been a little confused recently when we looked at future forms in class. I think it’s partly because some grammar books and coursebook writers give rules which are either not true or not fully accurate, ultimately adding to the confusion. So my aim here in the next few posts is to clarify things for you.

First, there is no ‘future tense’ in English. In fact, we have a variety of forms to choose from when we want to refer to events in the future or ‘post-present’.

The forms that we choose depend on how we see the future event. The grammatical form which we use depends on things like our mood, how we feel about the future event,  how objective or subjective or neutral we want to be, and on factors such as our sense of obligation, hope and certainty.

If you’re not sure what I mean, let’s start with a very practical example: