Let's talk about the future, part 2

Thanksgiving lunch at our Midtown branch STARTS at 2:30 p.m. tomorrow. ARE
you HANGING AROUND after your classes & PARTICIPATING in the feast? 

If you read our last blog lesson, you've gone through part 1 of my post on fine tuning (perfecting) your use of the future tenses. We focused on the simple future, the future with "be going to," and how one or the other is better in some situations.

In part 2, we'll focus on the use of the present tenses--the SIMPLE PRESENT and the PRESENT PROGRESSIVE--to talk about the future.

The good news is it couldn't be any simpler; there are just a couple of things to remember. First, if you also want to say that a future event is definitely going to happen because you've already made the decision, you can use the PRESENT PROGRESSIVE.

Let's talk about the future, part 1

Their neighbors had a nice picnic at a nearby park last weekend, so with the nice weather coming up, they
ARE GOING TO DO the same thing. They've invited some friends, who WILL BRING some sandwiches.

When you learn English in the lower levels, you are taught that the simple future with "will" and the future using "be going to + verb" mean the same thing and that you can use either of them to talk about the future. Do you remember? The following sentences are examples. 

• The party this weekend WILL BE awesome.
• The party this weekend IS GOING TO BE awesome.

For a lot of situations, including the examples above, this is true. The simple future and the future with "be going to" are often interchangeable. However, there are times when one of them sounds more idiomatic or more natural than the other.

This is why when you're in the intermediate levels, you start studying the nuances (slight, subtle differences) between these two tenses and learn that in some situations, one is, in fact, better than the other.