 now let's look at the future tenses. We'll focus first on the future simple tense. The future simple tense is used to indicate actions, of course, in the future. So, in order to form, at least for the positives, we use our subject first. It could be any subject you like. Here we're using we. Followed by the word will and our main verb go. We will go. To make the negative form, we begin with our subject again, followed by will again. Here we've included the word not, just before our main verb go. Will not, of course, can be contracted into won't, and the sentence will still be fine. To create the question, again we invert our words, so will begins the question. We keep our subject after that and use the main verb in its base form, will we go. Will can often be substituted with other modal verbs. This would indicate varying levels of certainty. We could substitute the words might or may for will in this context. Additionally, for questions, especially when making suggestions and in more formal situations, we may substitute the word shall for will. This would result in a question such as shall we go. The usages for the future simple are as follows. We have spontaneous decisions. I'll go with you. Somebody has just told you that they're going to go to the store. You need some things in the store as well, and you immediately decide and say, I'll go with you. We have predictions without evidence. It'll rain tomorrow. There might not be a cloud in the sky, but I still could make a prediction that it will rain tomorrow. Future facts. I'll be 21 next year. I'm 20 now, but in the future I'll be 21. We also have promises and threats. Often heard at weddings, I'll love you forever. Now we'll have a look at the teaching ideas for the future simple tense. As we said earlier, the future simple tense can be used for threats or promises, or in this case for predictions. Here we'll have a pair of students working together. One has a prompt to say something, and the other will begin it with a certain comment and then make a sentence using the future simple tense. Here I'm taking my driving test tomorrow. Good luck. You'll pass for sure. I lost a tennis again. Cheer up. You'll do better next time. So on and so forth. Of course, having a bit of feedback at the end. Some additional ideas for the future simple tense include things like horoscopes. Here you'll divide your class up into groups, provide them with a zodiac sign. They'll create an horoscope for that zodiac sign, and when they're finished, you'll gather them up together. They'll share their horoscopes and see who that actually applies to. Then we have our fortune telling. You could use this as a role play, whereas one student or a pair of students comes to see a fortune teller. Now the fortune teller will make statements such as, you'll have a baby next year. You'll get a great job promotion soon, so on and so forth. Finally, we have our wedding vows. You could encourage students to create their ideal wedding vows for their partner or some silly wedding vows, anything that will basically make a promise. This could also include employment contracts, so on and so forth. Now let's look at the future continuous tense. The future continuous tense is typically used to indicate an action in progress at a particular time in the future. To form this tense in the positive form, we have our subject here we've used, Karen. The word will, our auxiliary verb or helping verb to be, and then the present participle or the verb plus ing. So Karen will be going. In order to create the negative form, we keep with our positive form but add not in between will and our helping verb to be. Finally, we ask our question by beginning with will that we have our subject being sure to include our helping verb and the present participle. Will Karen be going? Some of the more common usages for the future continuous tense are as follows. We can use them to speak about actions in progress at a future time, such as, I'll be having lunch at 2 p.m. We can use it to predict the present. Because we're predicting, we wouldn't often predict something about ourselves, so perhaps somebody has asked about a gentleman, John, and his whereabouts. You're not sure about his whereabouts, but you're going to predict it and you use the future form. I think John will be having lunch now. We can also use it for polite inquiries, as particularly where we don't want to influence the outcome. There are other ways to ask things, but if we need to get the most accurate answer without influencing it, we could put it in a very polite form such as, will you be coming to the party? Now here are some teaching ideas for the future continuous tense. Here, we have an activity where we'll be asking students to spontaneously make some excuses based upon some invitations. We can do this into pairs or small groups. The teacher will have cut these cards up, and the students will place them into a pile, randomly picking up a card. So one student might pick this card up and say, would you like to play tennis with me tomorrow? The other student will be challenged to come up with an excuse as quickly as possible, which might be, no, I'm sorry, I'll be working. Then we have the next student pick up the next card, and we challenge an additional student to make an excuse. Here we have another teaching idea for the future continuous tense, and this involves two students trying to plan a meeting between themselves sometime in the future. One student will have a planner such as this filled in with quite a few activities. Their partner will also have a planner filled in with activities on opposite days. The activity will be rigged so that only one day allows for both of them to meet together. The objective of the activity will be to find that day. They'll need to do so by asking a series of questions. One may begin with, would you be available on the 14th? Here this student would notice that they have a conference and respond with, I'm sorry, I'll be attending a conference. He may return with another day, and by asking these series of questions, eventually they'll arrive at the day they can meet. As with any activity where certain members of the group are missing information, and they have to compare and contrast their information, we have to make sure that the students aren't actually showing each other their diaries, and they're having to ask each other questions and respond verbally. And now let's have a look at the future perfect tense. The future perfect tense is used to talk about an action in the future that will be completed by a point in the future. Here we have for our positive form. Our subject in general we're using the pronoun she here. So she will have finished. We're using the word will to indicate the future. We're using our helping verb or auxiliary verb have, and the past participle form of the main verb. In this case here it's finish, which we've conjugated as finished. She will have finished. In order to make the negative form, we simply add the word not between the word will, and our helping verb have. She will not have finished. And finally we ask our question by starting with the word will, then using our subject, our auxiliary verb have, and our main verb finished. Will she have finished. The only usage for this tense will be to speak about actions that will be completed before a future time. Here our example sentence reads, I will have finished this course by the end of the year. Here we're relating to a future action, finishing or have finished something by another point in the future, which is here the end of the year. Now let's take a look at the teaching ideas for the future perfect tense. This tense is used to talk about actions that will have happened by another point in time in the future. Here we could be asking questions like what will you have done by the age of 50? What will you have accomplished by next year? We could shorten that into simple diaries and journals. We could give students a monthly calendar for them to fill out. At the end of it we'll ask questions such as what will you have done by the end of the month? The students can make various comments based upon that. We can also use this for famous people. We can have our students choose a famous actor or famous politician and simply ask how many films will he have made by the time he's 50? How many films will she have directed by the year 2025? Now let's take a look at the future perfect continuous tense. This tense is used to talk about how long an action had been taking place up until a certain point in the future. Our examples are for the positive sentence we have our subject U and three auxiliary verbs will have been and then our main verb in the present participle form again that's the verb plus ing for our negative form again we're simply inserting the word not between will and have and to ask our question we invert will with the subject here we're using U and we come up with a question will you have been watching and the rest of our sentence as with the other future tenses the word will can be substituted for other modal verbs these modal verbs would indicate varying levels of certainty for the future so again we could substitute may or might for the word will also with the future tenses the will and not will contract into its contracted form of won't as mentioned earlier the usage for the future perfect continuous tense is to show how long an action will have happened by a future time our example sentence reads by the end of this year I'll have been living in London for 20 years so I'm talking about a point in the future by the end of this year and how long the action will have been happening by that time by the end of this year I'll have been living in London for 20 years a teaching idea for the future perfect continuous tense includes a survey here we want to be able to find out the duration of an activity at a certain point in time for the future a sample question might be how long will you have been learning English for by the end of the year at the end of the activity we should be able to identify who will have been learning English for the longest and who will have been learning English for the shortest amount of time another way of expressing the future tense is by what's called the going to future tense here we have our examples of they are going to watch they are not going to watch and the question are they going to watch here the important words are the helping verb to be conjugated appropriately based upon our subject we've got the word going the word to and the base form of any verb that follows to add the negative we'll put not in between are and going and again to make the question we'll invert the subject and the helping verb resulting in are they going to watch there are two usages for the going to future tense and they are as follows to indicate future plans with intentions that have been decided upon before speaking we could for example say they are going to watch a film I know that they've decided to go watch a film and I want to make a statement about them I can say they are going to watch a film or we can have predictions but this time the predictions are actually based upon evidence here I could see black clouds building in the sky coming towards me and I might say something like it's going to rain now let's take a look at a teaching idea for the going to future tense with a low level student we might be able to use pictures the students will work in pairs or small groups to look at evidence based upon the pictures and then make a prediction as to what the person is going to do as we have low level learners we might give them a few prompts based upon which they can make a sentence so they might read the word right look at the picture and say she's going to write a letter they can look at the word travel try to match it with a picture and say she's going to travel to Manchester some additional teaching ideas for the going to future tense include weather predictions we could give a student some information about a particular country and their weather based upon that information for that country our students will predict the weather in the future week or in the future month again these predictions are based upon evidence given we can also plan a party because the going to future tense is used for future plans that have already been set forth so we could plan a party or a holiday we could say i'm going to have a halloween party and i'm going to come as this person or that person and we are going to bring this food or that food and we're going to do this at the party or that or the party so on and so forth outside of the actual future tenses we can talk about things in the future but use present tenses two of them are present simple and present continuous we use the present simple typically to talk about timetables and schedules i'll say a statement such as the train leaves at six p.m we could also use present continuous when talking about future arrangements i've arranged something in the future so i could say something like we're playing football on saturday it's been arranged the teaching idea we'll use for the present continuous use for future arrangements is nearly identical to the activity used for the future continuous again we'll give our students diaries we'll pair them up and between the two of them they have to ask each other questions and find the day upon which both of them can meet the big difference here will be that we'll ask our students to form their questions and their answers in the present continuous tense so this student may hear a question such as what are you doing on the 14th this student would respond with i'm attending a conference this will occur until the students find the day upon which they can meet as you may have noticed there are quite a few activities which utilize a planner these planners or diaries are particularly useful for practicing the future tense and the past tense of course for the past tense we would use planners or diaries from the week previous and for the future tenses we'll use planners and diaries for next week or next month now we'll have a quick review of the future tenses in our first example sentence i will do my homework tomorrow the structure is subject i will plus the verb in its base form i will do this is the simple tense and is used particularly for predictions when there's no evidence present i think it'll rain tomorrow i don't have any evidence to suggest that i'm just making a prediction it's also used for threats and promises i will love you forever i'll kill you if you do that again the future simple is also used when we're making a spontaneous decision somebody tells you your friends in hospital you didn't know you say oh i'll go and visit her there's no plan involved it's purely a spontaneous decision our second example sentence at 4 p.m tomorrow i will be doing my homework i will be doing my homework is in the future continuous tense this has the structure subject i plus will plus b plus verb with the i and g at the end i will be doing the future continuous tense is used to describe an action that will be in progress at a particular future time just as the present continuous was used to talk about an action in progress at the present time and the past continuous was used to talk about an action in progress at the past time the future continuous is used to talk about an action progress at a particular future time. Third example sentence by 6 p.m. tomorrow I will have done my homework. This is the future perfect tense and this has a structure subject I plus will plus have plus the past participle in this case done. The future perfect tense is used for an action that will be completed before a point in the future. In this example sentence the point in the future is 6 p.m. and we want to express what will have been completed before that time. Our final example sentence at 5 p.m. tomorrow I will have been doing my homework for three hours. I will have been doing here is the future perfect continuous tense. This has the structure subject in this case I plus will plus have plus been plus verb ing. So we can see here this is the only tense we have with three auxiliary verbs will have and been. The future perfect continuous tense is used to focus on the duration of an action before a point in the future. A point in the future here is 5 p.m. tomorrow and we want to talk about the duration of an activity up until that point. I will have been doing my homework for three hours up until that point. There are also three additional tenses which can be used to express the future. As in our first example sentence here this is the going to future I'm going to play tennis tomorrow. The going to future has the structure subject plus the verb to be in the present tense am is or are plus going plus to plus the verb in the base form I am going to play. The going to future unlike the future simple is used to express plans or intentions things that have already been decided before the moment of speaking. The going to future is also used for predictions whereas the future simple use predictions without evidence. The going to future is used for predictions with evidence for example I can see a big black cloud overhead I have some evidence therefore I can make my prediction it's going to rain. We can also use the present continuous for the future. Here we see I am seeing the doctor tomorrow. This is just the normal present continuous structure that we've seen before subject plus verb to be in the present tense plus verb with I and G at the end. The present continuous tense for the future is used for future arrangements things that you'd put in your planners diaries or journals. The final tense that we use for the future is the present simple such as in our example sentence the train leaves at 6 p.m. The present simple here is being used with a future meaning and it's used for scheduled or timetabled events. Here now are some tips on the successful completion of your three tense units. First when identifying a sentence's tense focus on the structure of the sentence rather than its usage. The structure is what dictates the tense used. For example if a sentence lacks the auxiliary verb to have it cannot be a perfect tense sentence. Similarly if a sentence lacks the present participle used as the main verb in the sentence it cannot be a continuous tense sentence. This can also be helpful for creating sentences. Once you've created a sentence you feel is appropriate have another look and analyze that sentence's form before looking at its usage. When asked for reasons why you've identified a specific tense be sure to list a usage. If you're able to do this correctly your answer will most likely be correct. When asked to explain something to a low-level student be sure to word your answer as if you're really explaining it to the low-level student rather than your tutor. Be sure to use basic language and be as clear as possible. Finally when asked to give an activate stage idea please bear in mind the aims of the activate stage. These are one to maximize student talk time. Be sure that your activity allows for the students to speak as much as possible. Secondly be sure that the students are using the language freely and in an open-ended way so as to maximize or improve fluency. Three focus on the target language we always want to be ensuring that our students are using the very language point that we've been explaining. Finally keep in mind that these shouldn't be worksheet based activities where the worksheets are more useful for the study stage rather than the activate stage.