Learn Future Continuous Tense | Basic English Grammar Course

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In this video, I will introduce the future continuous English grammar tense.

This tense can be used to express an ongoing action in the future.

I'll go over the basics of this lesson.

And by the end you'll have a better idea of when to use this tense.

There's a lot to learn, so let's get started.

One usage of the future continuous tense

is to talk about an ongoing action that will happen in the future.

We include when this action will be happening.

We can use ‘will be’ or ‘be going to be’.

To do this, let's take a look at some examples.

‘I will be taking the test soon.’

So you can see here we have the subject and then ‘will be’.

After that, we include verb +ing.

The word ‘soon’ at the end of this sentence indicates when this action will be happening.

‘I am going to be taking the test soon.’

This sentence means the same thing as the first sentence,

but instead of ‘will be’, we used ‘be going to be’.

Here the subject is ‘I’.

And therefore we have the ‘be’ verb ‘am’.

‘I am going to be’ And then verb +ing.

‘I am going to be taking the test soon.’

I can also use the contraction and say.

‘I'm going to be taking the test soon.’

The next sentence says, ‘He will be sleeping by 10 p.m.’

And the last sentence says, ‘They are going to be …’

Here, because the subject is ‘they’, we use ‘are’.

‘They are going to be studying …’ There's the verb +ing

‘… next October.’

‘by 10 pm’ and ‘next October’ show when these actions will be happening.

The future continuous tense is also used to show

that a short action in the future is happening

during or while a longer action is in progress in the future,.

We can use the word ‘when’ to show when the shorter action occurs.

Take a look at the first example,

‘I will be sleeping when they arrive.’

Here we see two actions,

‘I will be sleeping’ and ‘they arrive’.

The part of the sentence that's in the future continuous tense is the longer action

that's in progress in the future.

‘I will be sleeping.’

Remember, ‘I will be’ and then verb +ing.

This is the action that is ongoing in the future.

Then we see ‘when they arrive’.

This is in the present tense.

‘they arrive’

This is the shorter action that happens while this action is ongoing.

‘We will be having dinner when the movie starts.’

This is very similar to the first sentence.

‘We will be having dinner …’

That's the ongoing action that will happen in the future.

And while this is happening, the movie will start.

But again, we use the present tense here.

‘the movie starts’

So we will be having dinner when the movie starts.

‘Tina is going to be working when you leave.’

Remember, we can use ‘be going to be’ in this tense so,

‘She is going to be working when you leave.’

This shorter action will happen while this ongoing action is in progress.

And finally, ‘It will be raining when you go shopping’.

Again, this is the ongoing action.

And this is the shorter action.

Now, I'll talk about the negative form of the future continuous tense.

Here are some examples:

‘He will not be reading before bed.’

For the negative form, after the subject and ‘will’, we say ‘not be’.

And then verb +ing.

‘He will not be reading before bed.’

He'll be doing something else.

The next sentence says,

‘My dad won't be cheering when the game ends.’

So this is very similar to the first sentence.

We have the subject, ‘my dad,’

and instead of ‘will not’ we use the contraction ‘won't’.

Remember, ‘won't’ is a contraction for ‘will not’.

‘My dad won't …’ and then we have ‘be’ verb +ing.

‘My dad won't be cheering when the game ends.’

The next sentence says, ‘He is not going to be working tomorrow.’

Here we have the ‘be going to be’.

So ‘he’ is the subject and so we use the ‘be’ verb ‘is’.

After the ‘be’ verb, we say ‘not’.

He is not going to ‘be’ verb +ing.

‘He is not going to be working tomorrow.’

Remember, we can also use a contraction here and say,

‘He isn't going to be working tomorrow.’

That's okay as well.

‘We aren't going to be shopping on Sunday.’

Here the subject is ‘we’.

And so the ‘be’ verb to use is ‘are’.

I use the contraction here ‘aren't’ for ‘are not’.

‘We are not …’ or ‘We aren't going to be shopping on Sunday.’

Now let's talk about how to form basic questions in the future continuous tense.

Take a look at this first sentence.

It says, ‘He will be traveling next month.’

Now, to turn this into a question,

all you have to do is change the order of the first two words.

So ‘He will’ becomes ‘Will he’.

‘Will he be traveling next month?’

You'll notice that the rest of the words don't change.

Only the first two words.

So, ‘Will he be traveling next month?’

To answer you can say, ‘Yes, he will.’

or ‘No, he won't.’

The next sentence says, ‘They are going to be living there.’

Again to turn this into a question, simply switch the order of the first two words.

‘They are’ becomes ‘Are they’.

‘Are they going to be living there?’

To reply you can say, ‘Yes, they are.’

or ‘No, they aren't.’

Now, you'll notice in these two sentences,

there is no exact point in time that shows when this action will be happening in the future.

There is no ‘next month’ or anything like that.

In that case, it simply means sometime in the future.

So, they are going to be living there sometime in the future.

That's what that means.

Great job, everyone.

Now, I'll go into how to form ‘WH’ questions in the future continuous tense.

Take a look at the board.

First, you'll notice that all of these questions begin with the ‘Wh’ words -

‘Where,’ ‘What,’ ‘Who,’ and ‘When’.

Let's take a look at the first question.

‘Where will he be working?’

When we use ‘will be’, we start with ‘Where’ and then ‘will’.

After that, we have the subject + be and then verb +ing.

‘Where will he be working?’

I can answer by saying,

‘He will’ or ‘He'll be working at the factory.’

The next question says, ‘What will she be watching?’

This is very similar to the first question.

The only difference is that the subject is now ‘she’ and the verb is different.

‘What will she be watching?’

I can say, ‘She'll be watching’ or ‘She will be watching her favorite tv show’.

‘Who will they be talking to?’

Again, very similar.

To answer,I can say,

‘They will be talking to their mom.’

The last question has ‘be going to be’.

‘When are we …’ here the subject is ’we’.

So we start with the ‘be verb’ – ‘are’.

‘When are we going to be meeting Casey?’

‘We are going to be meeting Casey later tonight.’

Good job, everybody.

Now, you have a better understanding of the future continuous tense.

Please take some time to study and practice this tense as it is very important.

I know English can be a struggle, but don't worry, I'm here for you.

And I believe in you.

I'll see you in the next video.