Future Tense?

Question

How many tenses do you think there are in English? 2 or 3?
It seems even scholars have different opinions on this.
There are Past and Present tenses, but Future tense should be included there?
do -did - [ will do ] .... WILL is Present Tense.
do (present form), did (past form) but no future form as one word.
How do most English teacher teach English tense??

Miranda Tik · Accepted Answer

In my opinion there are 3 include Past tense, present tense and future tense.
"Will do" is future tense.

Ps. I'm not a teacher. I'm a student.

Kenkenken9876 · Answer

"This door won't(=will not) open."---- Do you think this is future tense?
Meaning: This door refuses to open as if I had a human will.
This sentence describes a fact of present, though.

Fivejedjon · Answer

Most grammarians today consider that there are only two tenses in English.We have the uninflected tense, often called the present simple, and the tense inflected for distancing in time, reality and directness, often call the past simple. We have no inflected tense in English to express futurity. There are at least five common ways of expressing futurity, as seen in Emma flies/is flying/is going to fly/will fly/will be flying to Paris next week. WILL is simply one of several modals which can indicate a degree of certainty about future situations; it can also indicate other things.

Fivejedjon · Answer

kenkenken9876"This door won't(=will not) open."---- Do you think this is future tense?

No. WILL here suggests a characteristic of the door - in human terms, that of refusing to open.

Kenkenken9876 · Answer

Thank you.
Very interesting.
Do you think, for example to teach English to high school students, we should avoid teaching Future Tense? Would it be better to teach them that there are only two tenses in English?
Or, do you think it is still okay to say there are three tenses, to make the general understanding easier?

Some teachers say, there are three tenses in English, but no future form.
To express futurity, or Future Tense, the combination of the present form WILL and root form of a verb is used.
Actually, in Japan, most grammar books explains Future Tense.

Fivejedjon · Answer

kenkenken9876Do you think, for example to teach English to high school students, we should avoid teaching Future Tense?

There are still, unfortunately, many course books and grammar books for students that refer to the WILL future as the future tense. I find this very unhelpful, and have told my students so for many years. I believe that my students have benefited from this, and understand how to express the future with less confusion than when they were trapped in the belief that WILL is the future tense; with the implication that it is the natural, in some way 'neutral' form to use.

However, I do understand that some teachers are reluctant to be seen to disagree with the printed word, especially if they are not too sure themselves about expressing futurity in English. I think teachers should use the system that they are most comfortable with, so long as they do not make the common mistake of insisting that there is one, and only one, 'correct' way of expressing the future in any particular situation.

If you are interested, you'll find a summary of my views on ways of expressing the future here.

Kenkenken9876 · Answer

Thank you for the link.
I have bookmarked it, and am going to read your explanation thoroughly.

Son James · Answer

I'm sorry for disturbing the conversation of you,two. I want to say this. Amazing question! Amazing answer! I've never known there are only 2 tenses in English.I thought there were 3 tenses.

Thanks to this question, I could clearly know why British and American are so often using the modal "would" and why present tense sometimes indicate "future". They would have taught me like that.

Fivejedjon · Answer

Son JamesI'm sorry for disturbing the conversation of you,two.

There are no private conversations in this public forum. Anybody is welcome to join in, so long as they are reasonably polite and what they have to say is relevant.

Son James I've never known there are only 2 tenses in English.I thought there were 3 tenses.

Lots of people believe this. I am sure that some native speakers will join this thread and claim that I am wrong. Don't forget: the division of certain verb forms into labelled 'tenses' is an artificial device to enable us to talk about how these forms are used.

If I were pressed, I would not really claim that there were two tenses in English. I would claim that it was convenient and useful to gather similar verb forms into groups, labelled tenses, and see what these groups had in common. I would say that a division into two tenses closer reflected how verbs are used than a division into three tenses.

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