The future tense | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy

Hello, grammar pals, and welcome to the future full of jetpacks and spaceships and shiny jumpsuits. Uh, and also the word "will." There's a lot of "will" in the future.

Uh, by which I mean that we use this word "will" to form the future tense in English. So, in the present tense you'd say, "I eat this cupcake." That's the present. But in the future, you would say, "I will eat this cupcake," because we use the future to talk about stuff that's happening later than now. Literally, it's in the future, so it's later as opposed to the present, which talks about now, and the past, which talks about stuff that has already happened earlier.

So, the most common way to form the future is to just make a sentence in the present tense, and then before the verb, just stick "will" in there. So, "I pet the Triceratops," everyone's favorite dinosaur. Wish I could pet one! Can't; they're extinct.

"I pet the Triceratops." But in the future, maybe when they clone dinosaurs, I will pet the Triceratops, and we will be best buds. So, that's the most basic way of forming the future.

You can also use, you know, "is going to." So you could say, "You know, Ryan is going to visit Canada." And that's another way to form the future. But the most common way to do it is to just put in "will." Just write the sentence as you would for the present tense, but then you just got to pop in "will."

"I eat this cupcake" is the present. "I will eat this cupcake" in the future. That's the future tense. You will be able to learn anything, Dave!