'Going to' and verbs of movement

Question

I understand that you usually don't use 'going to' expressing future with verbs of motion, especially 'go' itself and 'come', you use Present Progressive instead. Yet you can find quite a few examples of the contrary, even among sample sentences of Oxford Advanced Learners' Dictionary. I am rather confused.

LouiseT · Accepted Answer

We use ‘going to’ to express future when there is the intention to do something. If there is a personal arrangement we usually tend to use the present progressive as you correctly stated. Using ‘going to’ in these circumstances is not, however, incorrect.

For example ‘ I am going to Paris this weekend’. Instead of ‘I am going to go to Paris’.
Or ‘I’m seeing John in the bar after work’. Instead of ‘I am going to see John...’

We don’t use the present progressive for forecasting or prediction. So we don’t say ‘The weather forecast says it is raining tomorrow’ we have to use ‘going to’. ‘The weather forecast says it is going to rain tomorrow

I hope this answers your question. If not maybe you could tell me some of the sentences that you find confusing and I will try to explain them to you.

Louise

'Going to' and verbs of movement

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