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When do you use "going to" and when "will" as the future form?Thanks in advance.Ali

Usenet · Accepted Answer

This is a difficult question and there are few easy answers to this one. Properly doing so in a responsible manner would take pages, and you would find it difficult to read through such an answer. The difference between "be going to" and "will" as future tenses is not like the difference between related lexical forms such as "hear" and "listen to," despite what you may have heard.
My advice to you: find a very good teacher to help you here, if you find a good grammar book to be unhelpful. However, many books and many teachers do not and cannot explain this grammatical phenomenon in a helpful way. If you find a teacher who treats this phenomenon as if it can be easily explained in thirty seconds or less, immediately dump her/him and find someone else. Anyone with significant experience teaching English as a Foreign Language is aware of this problem and has a special, personal way of teaching "be going to" and "will."

Usenet · Answer

credoquaabsurdum schrieb:
[nq:1]This is a difficult question and there are few easy answers to this one. Properly doing so in a responsible manner would take pages, and[/nq]
But nevertheless, could you tell me - in some sentences - what the difference is?
Ali

Usenet · Answer

Ali Asoag schrieb:
[nq:1]credoquaabsurdum schrieb:[/nq]
[nq:2]This is a difficult question and there are few easy answers to this one. Properly doing so in a responsible manner would take pages, and[/nq]
[nq:1]But nevertheless, could you tell me - in some sentences - what the difference is?[/nq]
Some broad outlines:
We use "will" to express spontaneous decisions taken at the time of speaking, to make general predictions, to refer to future facts and to refer to habitual action in the present - "will" is also used in the main clause of "type one" conditional sentences (this can be seen as a form of prediction).
We use "going to" when expressing intentions (decisions taken at an earlier time) and to make predictions based on present evidence.

This is by no means exhaustive and I'm sure I've left out some usages. A full explanation with examples would be considerably longer.

Regards, Einde O'Callaghan

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]When do you use "going to" and when "will" as the future form? Thanks in advance. Ali[/nq]
'Is going to' carries the meaning that something is about to happen very shortly. (Do you think it's going to rain? or We thought the train was going to stop here.)
'Will' is used to indicate simple futurity, likelihood, certainty, intention, ability, etc. (at any time in the future).

dwjo

Usenet · Answer

hkeol schrieb:
[nq:2]When do you use "going to" and when "will" as the future form? Thanks in advance. Ali[/nq]
[nq:1]'Is going to' carries the meaning that something is about to happen very shortly. (Do you think it's going to rain? or We thought the train was going to stop here.)[/nq]
This is incomplete.
[nq:1]'Will' is used to indicate simple futurity, likelihood, certainty, intention, ability, etc. (at any time in the future).[/nq]
And so is this. See my earlier message.
Also "will" doesn't just carry an idea of futurity. As I mentioned earlier it can also express the idea of repeated action in the present.

As regards futurity, there are at least 14 ways of expressing futurity in English - and "will" is not used in the majority of cases - I would guess (partly based on an analysis of my own usage) that the present continuous and the "going to" structure are more frequent.

Regards, Einde O'callaghan

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