No doubt you will have heard people say ‘I’ll go home soon’ or ‘I’m going to go home soon’ but have you ever thought that there might be a rule behind whether you say one or the other? Most students simply use both interchangeably, but learning the real difference between these two tenses can add a whole new dimension to your self-expression in English. Let’s start with what we know: both are future tenses that are very commonly used in everyday speech. The ‘will’ future, or future simple, has very few irregularities and is simply formed using person + will + bare infinitive of the verb (remember to omit the word ‘to’). The ‘going to future’ is even more basic using only person + going to + bare infinitive, but should not be confused with the present continuous ‘I’m going to the shops’ which can also sometimes refer to the future, but is a completely separate tense. Putting the present continuous aside, let’s get down to our two futures: everything is clear so far!

To illustrate how to use these two tenses, I find the best example to be the telephone. Imagine that you arrive home from work, ready to cook some dinner, and the phone is ringing. It’s a colleague asking you to come to the pub for some drinks, and you think it sounds like fun. You didn’t know your colleague would call so you have to make an immediate decision- ‘Yes, I’ll come. See you later.’ Now rewind a moment and look at scenario two. This time your colleague catches you at work and invites you for drinks and you also decide to join him. Then later another friend asks what your plans are for the night. You’ve already thought about and decided on your plans so you tell your friend, ‘I’m going to go for drinks with Ed.’ In the first situation, you needed the future simple, and in the second ‘going to + bare infinitive’.

Now we can break down the difference between these two responses. The future simple is used to express on-the-spot thoughts and decisions, therefore, one of its most common uses is to express a prediction, so a guess or a subjective opinion when we've not made any definite arrangement, but just think that something is likely to happen. It’s all about the way we feel at the time of speaking- the phone rings and we express an immediate response to the question the caller asks. With the World Cup on everybody’s lips, everyone is giving instant predictions of who will win ‘I reckon Columbia will take the championship’ or ‘Uruguay won’t be in the final’ so you’re likely to hear this a lot! You should also make use of the ‘will’ future any time you snap your fingers and come up with an idea in the moment- you finish work early and say ‘I think I’ll go to the beach!’ a friend suggests watching a video ‘I have to finish this, I’ll watch it later.’ Someone you know drops his phone and you rescue the situation by exclaiming ‘Don’t worry, I’ll fix it!’ Other areas where ‘will’ crops up are: promises, offers of help, refusals and requests, because these all come from momentary thought. Using ‘going to’ is not a disaster in these situations, but it will give the listener the impression that you made a decision before speaking, because ‘will’ is for times when you haven’t made advance arrangements!

Now let’s turn our attention to the ‘going to’ future, instead. As you might expect, this covers the area that ‘will’ does not and is used for situations where you have thought in advance about your decision. Logically then, ‘going to’ is much more common for big decisions as it’s not common to make these without some planning, for example, marriage, university and career decisions amongst many other things. This structure is often associated with personal intentions because, again, we give these some thought, so your New Year’s Resolutions might be ‘I’m going to give up smoking and start going to the gym’ or ‘I’m going to repaint the house’ and it would be wrong to use ‘will’ in this instance. A speaker will probably ask you, ‘Where are you going to go on holiday?’, too, or ‘When are you going to have your interview?’ because it’s reasonable to think that you’ve planned these things in advance- unless you’re an unusually spontaneous person!

The ‘going to’ future also has a special function for predictions based on direct evidence or which we feel really certain about: ‘I’ve seen them play, Brazil are definitely going to win the World Cup!’ Or that rare moment when you look at the British sky, see no clouds, and have the opportunity to predict ‘It’s not going to rain, let’s eat outside!’ Or, how about when you see a friend studying and reckon that ‘she’s going to get great grades’. When it comes to predictions, the difference between these two tenses isn’t so well defined, but there’s no question a ‘going to’ future will make your audience believe you’re more certain about your prediction. I know it will take time to get the use of these two tenses clear in your mind, but just try asking yourself before you speak which is of these two categories your future situation could fit into. Good luck!

Please contact me if you are interested in having 1-1 English lessons!