Going to vs Will – diferencias del FUTURO: future tenses

DIFERENCES between WILL and GOING TO for the future

When we want to talk about the future there are different ways of expressing an idea. In this class we are going to focus only on will and going to. However, it is important to remind you that there are other ways which we will cover in future lessons.

For many people, including natives, there is little or no differences between going to and will.  Many do not even pay attention to these differences because they just want to communicate and for them both are future and both are the same.  But we are not here to simply learn to communicate but to do it effectively and correctly. Therefore, we are going to review the differences.

DIFFERENCES IN USE – Diferencias en el uso entre going to y will

Talking about the future

We use WILL for the following situations:

- Instant decisions
– Promises
– Offers
– Predictions

We use Going To for:

- Plans
– *Predictions

Look at the following conclusions:

* Entonces la diferencia principal entre GOING TO y WILL es dependiendo de cuando se haya tomado la decisión.

Como esta claro, GOING TO es usado para hablar de planes y un plan es una decision tomada en el pasado (VER LA FIGURA ARRIBA) Will por el contrario, es una decision que uno toma en el momento en que uno habla (Desición instantanea).

Tambíen vemos que hay otras funciones y usos en las cuales utilizamos will o going to. Para la explicación de estos puntos favor de referirse al audio y a las lecciones 17 (going to) y 36 (will)