Is There a ‘Future Tense’ in English?

When studying at school and university, I remember we were always told that there are 16 tenses in Active Voice and 10 in Passive Voice in English language. I am pretty confident that in many other countries this is the way it’s taught as well. And I used to tell my students the same thing until a few years ago.

I’d like to share some interesting things that I learned while obtaining international qualifications – I am sure this will be surprising for some of you too.

First, there are only TWO tenses in English: PAST and PRESENT. There’s NO ‘Future Tense’ in English. A ‘tense’ is used to refer to a certain time and what we’re used to calling ‘tenses‘ are actually ‘aspects‘.

So, why would so many linguists say that there’s no such thing as a ‘Future Tense’ in English?

For a tense, the ending of a word (morpheme) has to be changed. To talk about the future, main verbs don’t need to be changed – for this, auxiliary verbs are added. The auxiliary verbs are the words that give additional support to the main verbs.

E.g., in a sentence like, ‘I will do my homework‘ – ‘do‘ is the main verb and ‘will‘ is just a little helper that shows that the action will be done in the future.

Other than ‘will‘, ‘going to’, Present Tense and its aspects, such as Continuous or Perfect can be used to refer to the future:

Will: ‘I will do my homework’ (a prediction or a spontaneous decision)

Going to: ‘I’m going to do my homework tonight‘ (a planned arrangement)

Present Continuous: ‘I’m doing my homework tonight‘ (a planned arrangement; in most cases, it’s interchangeable with ‘going to‘)

Future Continuous: ‘I’ll be doing my homework tonight‘ (a long action at a certain time in the future)

Present Perfect Simple*: ‘I’ll have done my homework by tonight‘ (an action will be done by a certain point in the future).

*Keep in mind that if you’re doing an international test as a teacher and use the term ‘Present Perfect‘, it will be considered as an INCORRECT answer. The correct term is ‘Present Perfect Simple‘ (also, the correct term for ‘Past Perfect‘ is ‘Past Perfect Simple‘).

Test Yourself:

1. How many tenses are there in English language? What are they?
2. Does a tense always need an auxiliary verb?
3. Does the past tense only refer to the past time?
4. Is ‘Progressive’ known as an aspect or a tense?
5. Can all verb forms be changed from Active to Passive Voice?
6. Can all sentences be changed from Active to Passive Voice?
7. Is ‘always’ only used with Present Simple tense?
8. Is the Past Participle only used in Perfect and Passive verb phrases?
9. Do Perfect verb forms only refer to past time?
10. Can the Present Simple tense refer to past time?
11. Does ‘will’ only refer to the future?
12. Is ‘an agent’ and ‘a subject’ of a sentence the same thing?

If you have any doubts or questions, kindly leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.