uses for the future continuous. Now, as you can see, it’s a beautiful day in London, the
sun is shining. Oo the sun is shining, sunshine, holidays! That gives me an idea.
”Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Dan speaking. Welcome aboard BBC Airlines flight
Learning English, non-stop service to English fluency. Our flight time will be approximately
two to three minutes. We will be flying at an altitude of zero feet at a ground speed
of 160 words per minute. We will be showing our safety demonstration and, following that,
flight attendants will be circulating around the cabin to offer you refreshments. So sit
back, relax and enjoy the ride.”
Have you ever flown on an aeroplane? If you have, you might have heard an announcement
just like that one. You may have noticed that when the captain makes his announcement, he
uses a lot of the future continuous. Why?
Well, the future continuous can be used to talk about an activity that will be in progress
at a specific future time. For example, at four o’clock tomorrow I’ll be lying here again.
However, our captain friend didn’t mention any specific future times. So why does he
use the future continuous? Let’s let him explain.
”Well, in addition to the use mentioned above, the future continuous can be used to talk
about a future event that will happen in the normal course of things. This means that the action
is certain to happen without any effort or decision being made by the speaker. I use
the future continuous because I want to make my passengers relax. We will be flying at
50,000 feet means this will happen anyway and is normal or routine, so sit down, relax,
everything is fine!”
Thanks Captain. Now, consider other examples:
‘I’m sorry you missed the bus, but I can give you a lift since I’ll be going into town anyway
to do the shopping.’
Or, ‘Give me John’s birthday present and I’ll give it to him for you, since I’ll be seeing
him at work on Monday.’
Now, because of this use, we can also use the future continuous to politely enquire
about a person’s plans for the future. ‘Are you going to come to dinner?’ could be taken
in a way meaning I am pushing you for a decision – almost like I’ve got to have an answer.
But, ‘will you be coming to dinner?’ implies that I simply want to know about your future
plans and there’s no pressure from me one way or another. In this usage, we can also
bend the rules about state verbs being used in the continuous form – so we can ask questions
like, will you be wanting dinner?
Did you get it? Good.
”
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