Korean Job Discussion Forums

[JongnoGuru]

A Korean recently showed me the following exercise and asked me to confirm that it's right and tell them why it's right. Damn.

[jajdude]

We can speak it but it sure is hard to explain. Maybe it's the same for everybody, whatever language they speak? Grammar is not easy ^^

[Woland]

You're right, Guru - both forms are grammatical in every sentence.

Koreans (and many others around the world) get taught various 'rules' for which form to use in referring to future time. For example, use 'going to' for future plans or use 'will' for immediate decisions. The problem is, this is bullshit.

In actual discourse, speaking of serial future plans, native speakers will start with 'going to' and switch to 'will' (or even to present simple or progressive) once it is established that they are talking about plans, and won't return to 'going to' until the end of plans, which is what the form signals:

"Tomorrow, I'm going to get up early, have a quick breakfast, and head out to meet a friend. We'll go biking along the Han, and stop in at a good kalbi tang plance for lunch. We'll head back home after that and I'll make a quick stop at the office in the afternoon. At the end of the day, I'm going out for drinks with some people from the office."

In reality the choice of forms is a piece of complex decision-making, and involves many factors, including knowing what discourse you are in, and the actual process involved may be too subtle for explication. Take the following sentence and complete it grammatically:

Your plane _________ (leave) at 6:00 tomorrow.

Koreans (and other learners have been taught to use the present simple when talking about timetabled events like this. But, excluding other modal verbs besides 'will', there are six grammmatical ways to complete this sentence:

Your plane leaves tomorrow at 6:00.
Your plane is leaving tomorrow at 6:00.
Your plane is going to leave to leave tomorrow at 6:00.
Your plane will leave tomorrow at 6:00.
Your plane will be leaving tomorrow at 6:00.
Your plane is going to be leaving tomorrow at 6:00.

All are grammatical. Each could be correct in some particular discourse. I'm sure that each one does occur. But, I cannot tell you what the exact distinction among them is. It is just too subtle.

If we tell students to follow these 'rules', they will in some sense never be wrong. But they will really only be speaking a facsimile off English.

(I can give many more examples of similar phenomena.)

[Woland]

[dogshed]

I teach at a public school and I see my job to teach whatever they need.
They need to speak English to each other because they don't get enough exposure with only 45 minutes each week from me.

I just did a lesson in verb tenses.

I will run. 1 2 3.
I am running.
I ran.

On their study sheet for expressing the future I told them:

I run tomorrow. (for schedules)

I will run. I will be running. I am going to run. (Treat them as equals. Learn the will form first.)

Their Korean teacher can teach them any fancy rules they need for their exams but I just want them to talk to each other.

[RACETRAITOR]

[billybrobby]

I think that exercise is complete b*llsh*t. It's like they arbitrarily choose answers for each question. And considering the serious problems most Koreans have with basic English, it (will, is going to be) a monumental waste of time for your student to study.

[Tokki1]

That exercise is retarded. I prefer to teach a more 'natural' method. I think grammar is too complicated and in many cases makes no sense in conversational English, particularly with phrasal verbs and idioms. I can see several examples in that exercise where either answer is correct in spoken English.

I think it's better to give plenty of examples and if the student asks why something is right, you say 'just because'. The more examples the better. The student can develop a feeling for the language, not just a pile of comlex grammatical rules.

[Woland]

Thanks for agreeing with me, billyb, though you were, as usual, more eloquent than me.

I reassert, perhaps more clearly - all those sentences are grammatical, and being out of context, there is nothing to be learned from them.

[SPINOZA]

[arjuna]

[Grimalkin]

We tend to use 'will'


1) for spontaneous decisions:

"What would you like to drink"?

"I'll have a beer".


2) for promises:

"Please remember to post that letter".

"Okay I won't forget".

Rather than 'going to' but.....


.....we use 'going to' to predict things that are about to happen:

"Oh look, that car is going to crash".

not 'will'.

[JongnoGuru]

Thanks for the many responses and for the thought and time that clearly went into some of them.

[sodabread]

I used to tell students that be going to is used way more often than will to talk about future intentions and predictions.

" it will rain tomorrow" only sounds better than "It's going to rain tomorrow" if you are trying to emphasize that you're einstein- sure of your prediction, in which case you would say "it WILL rain tomorrow"
The Giants WILL win the world series.

consider:
I will go to las vegas next week. sound strange?
I'm going to go to las vegas next week. loose intention
I'm going to las vegas next week. prearranged plan

just remember to say "gonna" , write going to, and get a be in there, and we're cool...

we often use be going to when present info leads us to make a prediction about a probable event in the near future.

The tanker is on fire. she will blow! hmmmm. maybe in french
The tanker is on fire! she's going to blow! sounds cool

will seems to occur most often as part of a conjunction

after school, i'll get a haircut. I swear! sounds fine. though more of a promise than an intention

so, will is often used to make promises

i won't chew gum in class.



after school, I'm going to get a haircut. more of a straight plan.




'll often follows a sentence or clause containing be going to, probably because be going to is just too long:

He is going to come over at six, and then he'll cook us dinner.

for similar reasons, 'll is used for intentions made at time of speaking :

You dropped you pen. don't move. I'll get it for you.
if you use be going to in this situation,

by the time you finish your sentence, you pen'll be in the hands of its owner .

(there are better tenses for this last sentence , but it's what we say, so phucket.)

"I'll be back" time enough for terminator to go get the car.
"I'm going to be back." heads have already started to roll across the deck by the time arnold has finished his sentence.

present progressive is often used when a plan is super-solid (aforementioned las vegas; bags packed, reservations made)
I can't come to your party, I'm working. prearranged plan

Present progressive is also used when you're talking about an extended form of the present, where an activity will finish at a specified time in the future:

she's taking chemistry this quarter. the activity (taking chemistry)finishes as soon as the quarter is up.



simple present is used when you're talking about a scheduled future event. Basta:
The train leaves a 6am on Friday.

Outside of conditional clauses, i like to leave it there. teaching them other uses of
simple present to talk about the future will undermine all the work you've done convincing them that our use of simple present has some sort of logic to it. anyway, that's my take.


will is probably a little more common than be going to in the result clause of the 1st (probable future) conditional:

If it rains tomorrow, the streets will get wet.

be going to also sounds totally natural:

If it rains tomorrow, the streets are going to get wet.

"ll is often used in sentences containing some kind of time clause:

she'll be comin' round the mountain when she comes.

I'll be asleep by the time you get here.

In most of these cases, you're talking about a prediction, not a plan.

will is probably most often used when making a request:

will you play misty for me?

still, a good 70% of the time, you can get away with using be going to.
when in doubt, go with be going to, and let the silly native speakers try to sort it out.

that's pretty much how I would bust it down for students, though I would never try to tackle all this in a 2 hour lesson.
there's obviously more to this than what any of us has mentioned, but I think these are most of the basics.

all pretty descriptive, I know. but the
prescriptive route generally gets the eyes rolling at you, no?

this is not a silly topic at all. "jut because" can be a great answer to a lot of questions. but hey, when there are some general guidelines out there, why not look at them?

[cubanlord]

I find that a lot of these test from which these questions are based lack context. In other words, as Woland pointed out, these are all grammatical given just the sentence. Thus, if asked in a multiple choice format to choose 'will' or 'going to' then both would be correct. Unfortunately, a lot of, well, 'test-makers' do not see it that way.

Basically, if we were to know the context in which the given sentence was to take place, then and only then could we differentiate between which would be the 'best' fit. I only hope that these questions were not taken out of a test where no context was given.

Hey OP, go with what Woland said. He is the most knowledgeable here when it comes to syntax.