So many students seem to learn only WILL and GOING TO for future and forget all the other future forms…

Future in English is a whole collection of different tenses and forms – not just WILL!

1. We need to select the most appropriate tense or form for what we want to communicate. If you only use WILL for every future situation, you will sound unnatural – apart from when it should be used. We use WILL for a number of very specific uses (below), rather than for discussing general future actions, like what you are doing tomorrow: use PRESENT CONTINUOUS or GOING TO instead.

2. Learners often overuse WILL, in some cases because their L1 has a particular future tense and they feel that WILL is equivalent to that. Try saying each example sentence below with WILL and you will see how unnatural many of them sound. There are NO dedicated future verbs in English so we use present and past forms instead, e.g. infinitive, present participle, past participle, and modal verbs like WILL and can.

3. Some learners only ever use WILL or GOING TO for future in English, but it is recommended to learn all the future forms, so you can always use the most appropriate one.

Download our free printable worksheets and revise the full list of tenses and forms:

Not Just WILL! – Guide to Future Forms in English

Direct download: https://purlandtraining.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/guide-to-future-forms-in-english.pdf

Not Just WILL! – Guide to Future Forms in English (Blank Version)

Direct download: https://purlandtraining.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/guide-to-future-forms-in-english-blank-version.pdf

Watch the recording of the free live class that I did on this topic:

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