Chapter 16: Feeling Tense? Sorting Out Verb Tenses 241
For a negative question, it’s best to teach the contraction form, which is far
more common.
Won’t you help me? (Will you not help me?)A fun way for teaching this tense is to use predictions. Everybody likes guess-
ing what’ll happen to their favourite football or celebrity. Give students the
event and ask them to predict in which year it will take place.
When students have progressed to intermediate level they’re likely to
become more interested in the difference between the future simple and
other expressions for the future. Interestingly, other uses for the future
simple tense are far more subtle than the reference to when an action takes
place.
In reality we don’t just use the future simple to stress that an action takes
place in the future. We can use this tense to show that we have only just
decided to do something rather than having carefully considered it before-
hand. Suppose that you go to a restaurant and examine the menu. You’re
quite likely to say something like: ‘I’ll have the steak, I think.’ Or perhaps the
phone rings, and you want to do the honours. You may say, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll
get it!
On the other hand, we often use the future simple to express a promise and
emphasise our determination to carry out an action, as in: I’ll get it right
somehow.
We can also make a request in the future simple: Will you help me lift this box
please?
Going into the future continuous
Use the future continuous tense for an action that’s in progress at a particular
moment in the future. So when you think of a particular time in the future and
imagine that scene, whatever actions are taking place can be expressed with
this tense.The future continuous always includes will, along with be and a gerund. So
for example:I will be listening.You will be listening.
He/she/it will be listening.We will be listening.
They will be listening.