Let's talk about the future simple tense. Now the first thing that we should
mention is that a lot of grammarians will say that English doesn't have a
future tense, and the reason for this is because if you look at the present tense
and the past tense, there's more inflection here. What we mean by that
is that the verb itself can be changed to indicate what's going on. So we have
"walked" for instance with the -ed ending. When we look at the future, we
tend to rely on helping verbs such as "will" or "will be," and even the ending
itself ("walk" or "walking") -- these are the basic parts of the verb. There's nothing
new here. We're just using the basic parts of the verb to create new
constructions. Because of that some grammarians will say that English
doesn't have a future tense. Of course it's still very difficult to describe
what's going on if we can't use that kind of language, and so it's natural to
say, well, there is a future. But it's good to at least know that grammarians
make this claim. Okay, so we have the future simple tense, and let's look next
at the basic forms of this particular tense. We have "will go," and you can
see that it's actually fairly easy here. We use the same form all the way
through. I will go, you will go, he/she/it will go -- all the way to the end.
That part's pretty straightforward. Now there are a couple of
alternate ways to create the same effect, or at least something very similar.
One is to use the verb "shall." So if you say "I shall go" that creates the same
effect roughly as "I will go." This verb "shall" is much more common in
British English than in North American English. It's really on the wane in North
America, and even in British English "shall" tends to be used to create the
future just in the first person. So you would say "I shall go" and then the plural
first person is "we shall go." Beyond that we don't
tend to create the future with "shall." Do note that "shall" is used for other things
other than creating the future like this, but we have a separate video on "shall."
Alright, then we have the negative form, and all we do here is we just add
"not" or "never," or some other negation. and if we want to contract this we could say
"I won't go." So "won't" is kind of a contraction for "will not." Then we have
questions, and with "will" and "shall" we simply change the word order. So "will you
go" instead of "you will go." And "shall we go," and "shall" here again is used
occasionally, but primarily to make suggestions. For instance if you say
"shall we go to the park?" And it's kind of like saying "let's go to the park."
It's to make a suggestion. Again, "shall" is mostly used in this case in the
first person: shall I go, shall we go (and really a lot of the time
with "shall we"). That doesn't mean that you can't say "will we go" sometimes as well, but
but less so with suggestions. You might say something like "will we be able to
accomplish this?" which is more of a theoretical question, and less of a
suggestion. Then the last form is the contraction, and this is fairly
straightforward. Instead of saying "will" we have "apostrophe + ll" and then we just
put the noun or pronoun or whatever before this. So "Bob will go" (Bob'll go) or "I will go" (I'll go).
Okay, so those are the basic forms. Let's have a look next at the basic uses.
There are four here. The first one is really to create some kind of
description of a future event, or something happening in the future.
This is the most generic use. If you say, for instance, "I will be sad to see you go" ...
We have "will be" here. That's the future simple tense, and then we are
describing some kind of state of emotion in the future. The second one is
a very peculiar use, and this is where we talk about some kind of spontaneous
decision -- some spontaneous action that we are doing.
Let's say somebody says "I have to go" and you say "Oh, I'll clean up!" That's
like saying this right in the moment. I'll do it! And it can actually be
something you do almost right away. So it's not very far in the future, but
it's a spontaneous decision. The next one is where you make a promise or you state
some kind of intention. So you say, "We will avenge your cousin's girlfriend" ... as
you should [sarcastic tone]. And so you're talking about what you're gonna do in the future (or
what somebody else will do). And then the last one here -- "You will do great!" -- this is
a prediction. This is a prediction talking about what you think will happen
in the future. Those are our basic uses for the future simple tense. Now the
last thing we'll cover here is just some tricky cases. In the first case we
have two different ways to say something similar. What we're talking about
here is events that are prearranged. So let's just write this as prearranged
events. Let's say that you are scheduled to take a plane the next day,
and you say "we are leaving at noon tomorrow."
For these prearranged events we are less likely to use the future simple
tense. It would sound awkward. It's not necessarily wrong, but we'll just say
this is awkward to say "We will leave at noon tomorrow."
If you've prearranged this, you would often say "we are leaving at noon
tomorrow. And then the last three examples here, what's going on here is
that in each case we are dealing with an independent clause and a dependent
clause. So we have an independent clause
and we have a dependent clause. The order is not totally crucial here. In the
independent clause we tend to have the future simple tense. We have the
future simple. And then in the dependent clause, because
we're talking about the future we might be tempted to use the future simple
again, but instead what we have is we tend to have the present simple.
... The present simple ... and this happens in a
number of cases. It's not a hard and fast rule, but it's just something to watch
out for. Let's go through these quite quickly here. The first one ... "We'll
stay until the sun goes down." This is our independent clause: "we will stay." There is
our future simple: "will stay." And then we have our dependent clause, and it starts
with a time marker. When you have this time marker you often end up using
the present simple. You don't say "the sun will go down." You say "the sun goes down."
That seems a bit odd perhaps if English is not your native language, but it's
something to watch out for. Okay, the second one here: "I will cover your shift" --there
is our independent clause. That can stand by itself as a sentence. We have "will
cover." That's our future simple, and then our dependent clause starts with this
conditional conjunction ... "if" -- "if you bring me cookies." Notice how again we
have "bring" (the present simple) instead of "you will bring me cookies." The last one is very
similar. We have a "that clause," and in the that clause we have "the crocodiles get
their food" -- not "will get their food." So those are things to watch out for,
especially if you are an ESL student, that when you have this this
combination of clauses here just watch out that often in the dependent clause
you still end up using the present simple tense. That's it for the future
simple tense.