GIVE ANSWERS - English

Hi! So I think you're talking about the difference between "doing" and "going to do" when they are both referring to the future. E.g. "Tomorrow I'm going to the store" and "Tomorrow I'm going to/gonna go to the store" (gonna = informal version of "going to"). Honestly, there's not much of a difference. Both are pretty informal, and if you were writing in a formal context, I would use the future tense ("I will go to the store") over either one.

But there is one difference I can think of. When there is a certain vagueness about the event you're describing, when it's something that may not happen, or you don't know when it will happen, then I think you can only use "going to do." Example: "Someday, I'm going to die." (I know, it's morbid, but it's the first example that I thought of that worked!) You CANNOT say "Someday, I am dying." Another example: "When I am older, I am going to drive a car." Similarly, you CANNOT say "When I'm older, I am driving a car." BUT, in all other circumstances, as far as I know, they are interchangeable, so "I'm going to drive my car to work tomorrow" works just as well as "I'm driving my car to work tomorrow."

Может казаться сложно, но я обещаю, что это не так сложно, как русская грамматика для людей говорящих по-английски))

EDIT: Oh wow I just realized this thread is from four years ago O_____O

”going to do sth” refers to future events with definite certainty, but not a definite time in which something is completed:

e.g. "We’re all going to die at some time in the future.|

As Benjamin Franklin once paraphrased most likely from Daniel Defoe: ”but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”

”to be doing sth” is all about defined future plans, i.e. plans with a defined time of being undertaken and completed. Usually, it is used informally:

”The plane with my friend on it is landing at the airport at 11am tomorrow.”

The formal tense for future plans is generally simple present: ”The plane lands at 11am tomorrow”.

Often, formal speech uses simple tense forms while informal uses much more continuous tenses. The reason is simple. When you are using formal language, you are often more interested in the completed result - so there are more simple tense verbs being used in formal speech. On the other hand, if you are chatting with your friends, you are often interested in what is happening in the event - so verbs are more often used with continuous tense forms.

In the case of ”the plane is landing at 11am tomorrow”, friends and family at that point in the future are waiting at the airport, anticipation and so on.

”The plane lands at 11am tomorrow” is more likely said by a bored customer service person at an airline office responding formally to questions about the plane’s landing time. You might have noticed that timetables in general use simple present forms to describe arrival and departure times.

Using ”will” for future events is all about a very high probability of happening, but not 100% certainty. Quite a lot of native English speakers don’t get this one! Many mix up ”will do sth”, ”going to do sth”, ”to be doing sth” and ”to do sth”. I’ve seen more than one native English speaker mess this up teaching to groups of non-native speakers

”gonna” is a slang contraction used primarily in US English. In Australian English, ”going to” contracts down to ”gunna”. It’s not very common to contract in standard British English as ”gonna”, although in Scots English it’s common and sounds a bit like ”ganna”. I don’t recall ever hearing ”gonna” in Indian English.

’will’ is used for spontaneous decisions, promises and offers, general predictions and opinions based on what we already know. * ”I’ll have a burger thanks” * ”I’ll pick you up at 4pm” * ” I’ll help you with that bag” * Barcelona will win the match” *”Maybe it will rain today” ’Going to”’ is used is used for premeditated plans made before the time of speaking and predictions made based on what we can see or hear. * I’m going to buy a new car next year” * ”Look at those black clouds, it’s going to rain” Present continuous is used to talk about future arrangements between people, like appointments and confirmed plans. *”I’m seeing the doctor this afternoon at 4pm” *I’m flying to Paris next week, I just bought the tickets”

@mac2210

You do know that books like Hewings or the Headway series are only presenting a model of how grammar is used, don’t you?

It’s very easy to get it wrong when you get an explanation from a grammar book - either because you don’t understand what is written, what is written is unclear or even wrong or the authors themselves are clueless about what they’re writing.

Yes, these two books can be wrong, even very wrong. If you are teaching ESL professionally, you should be able to look at any text or resource - no matter how ”famous” it is - and determine its strengths and weaknesses. Where it is deficient, you either adapt the material or change it completely. That includes the teaching of grammar.

As Michael Swan personally told me when I chatted with him, that anything written related to grammar should only be taken as a guide and not treated like a religious text - even his own grammar book. This is directly from the man who wrote one of the best grammar reference books out there, ”Practical English Usage”.

I’ve got a copy of Advanced Grammar in Use by Hewings. Yes, you copy-pasted a small part from Unit 9 without attribution and, perhaps, not understanding what was written. Hewings is very hit or miss. Essentially, it was Cambridge University Press cashing in on the success of the Murphy’s red and blue books by putting out one that was coloured green and ranked ”advanced”. Unfortunately, Hewings didn’t exactly follow what Raymond Murphy did by keeping things succinct, providing good differentiating examples for the grammatical points he was comparing or even drawing diagrams to illustrate better what was being explained.

Case to point - Unit 9. I see now from where you copy-pasted your grammatical explanations. You forgot to add that some apply for conditional forms and others don’t. It is problematic that conditional forms of ”will” make it into this unit.

Examples that Hewings gives often don’t properly differentiate meanings. For example, the sentence ”When I’ve saved enough money, I’m going to buy a digital camera”. The clause ”When I’ve saved enough money” doesn’t really give us any differentiation between a ”spontaneous” or ”planned” decision.

It gets especially problematic when you compare what has been written in Unit 9 with Unit 10. So, what constitutes a plan or a timetable when a timetable is a type of plan? As a result, students get confused about when to use ”going to” or a simple present or simple present continuous form.... This is why I rarely use Hewings with students...

Hewings in many instances doesn’t have a good model for grammar that works in the manner that real speakers use it nor are the examples he gives really differentiating in the grammatical model he uses.

That Hewings - in spite of being a British English speaker - is commonly used by teachers of American English tells us something about how few in the US are competent enough to actually teach grammar at a high level...

I’d taught from Headway myself quite often. This series has its own weaknesses. As someone who actually wrote materials which got published as part of the Headway series once told me: ”John and Liz Soars are very nice people. They even admit that there are problems in Headway”. He then went on to explain some of the problems - including grammatical explanations. Could you please provide us with the edition, level and chapter of Headway from which you got your information about ”will” and ”going to”?

Diplomatic? I am a graduate of the Christopher Hitchens School of Diplomacy, where I believe that BS should be called out rather than swept under the carpet of a veneer of fake politeness...

Time: ”I am doing” usually indicates an action that will take place in the near future and is more definite. ”I am going to do” emphasises an intention or plan that may have a more general time frame.