Will or Going To

Getting the student to understand the future means getting him to express it in different ways and it certainly means that using “will” does not express everything. This is where the teacher is challenged with making a clear distinction between the “going to” and the “will” so that at least the beginner will able to express the future as something planned or something spontaneous. That is the key in differentiating between the future sense using the “going to” and the future auxiliary “will”.

I like to use some real examples and then initiate a role-play using them so that the student will know the difference. All it takes is a bit of imagination, like saying that when the phone rings at that person’s house and the student can’t answer, if there is another person present who wants to answer it will say “I will answer it”. It helps if the contracted form of the simple future “I”ll’ has already been introduced. So the same statement will be: “I”ll answer it’. Another verb base can be used after the auxiliary like “get” to give: I’ll get it. This is the way to use the simple future especially when someone is required to do something spontaneously and had not planned what he was going to do in the future.

The other form is then used to relate something that has been planned, like “going to a show”. There the individual has thought of what he is going to do in the near future and he is not being spontaneous.