III. THE SIMPLE TENSE

5. The Simple Future Tense

The simple tense gets even more complicated when we use it for the future. Linguists, those who study language in general, even argue about whether it is actually a verb tense at all. Some think that it's a form of a Modal, because, unlike the other verb tenses, the verb form doesn't actually change. We simply add 'will' or 'going to' + base form of the verb. This is just like a modal. For example, to use the modal 'might', we simply add it to the base form of the verb. For example, we could add 'might' to the base form of the verb 'drive' to make 'might drive' in the sentence, "We might drive to the store this afternoon."

What's even more confusing is that when we were talking about a past event, we can talk about the future of the time of that event. We can also use the simple present to talk about the future and a continuous tense verb to talk about the future.

Although there are various forms of the simple future tense, including what could be considered a modal form and a continuous tense form, they will be covered in this section in order to put everything in one place and make it easier to remember.