Are the differences between will and going to really all that significant? Read on and find out.
I’ve been watching The Big Bang Theory so often lately that I guess I’m becoming a geek myself, but, honestly, how could I imagine that those adorable nerds would inspire me to write about will and going to?
Today, for example, I sat through six entire episodes trying to channel my admittedly tired and over strained attentional resources to both the plot and the language the characters used to talk about the future.
Why the future?
Long story short: I see more and more native speakers using the present continuous, will and going tofairly interchangeably and I wanted some sort of evidence to back me up.
So here are nine scenes from the delightfully funny The Big Bang Theory, of which at least six go against what the will and going to rules we traditionally teach our students : will for prediction, going to for intentions, plans or predictions based on present evidence and present progressive for arrangements. I hope the scenes make some sort of sense whether or not you’re familiar with the show.
There were fifteen scenes originally and, across the board, going to stood out as the standard form the five characters used to make predictions – far more than will. This is not a scientific, corpus-based study, of course, and I don’t want to generalize beyond the register used in this particular show, the writers’ styles and so on.
But when I intuitively wince at the thought of splitting hairs over will and going to, maybe I’m on to something.
Thanks for reading and be sure to read all the comments on this post.
I’m also a big biG bIG BIG fan of the series (the kind who carries a pendrive in my bag with a few episodes, just in case I get abducted by aliens and never get the chance of watching it again) and loved your post. It’s funny how I’ve never paid attention to it before. Oh my! Now I will (prediction)…
Carla,
Thank you for your kind words. It’s so great to hear that this post has somehow prompted you to pay attention to stuff you’d taken for granted.
… or would it be an intention? LOL!
Thank you, Carla!
Lou,
I loved this post. I was just thinking… for some of these couldn’t you just say that the person is sure or not sure? I am going to get married one day. ( sure) I will get married one day. ( not sure)… It is just a thought that popped into my mind.
beijo
Meire,
Thank you for stopping by and for your kind words.
Read Scott’s response below. He’ll shed far more light on your question than I ever could.
Nice, Luiz – it’s always great to have data from “real life” — even if a sitcom — against which to compare the kinds of rules handed down in pedagogical grammars and coursebooks. And it’s true that the future is a minefield, full of confusing rules and prescriptions. But in fact none of your examples contradict the basic facts of the matter (and ignoring example 9 which is not a future form at all: “this is going on twitter” is present continuous). The basic facts of the matter are that, like all modal verbs, ‘will’ can be used in two distinct ways:1. to express the speaker’s assessment of the likelihood of an event or situation; 2.to intervene in an event or situation. Thus, ‘will’ can express 1. probability/predictability, typically about future events but not always, as in ‘it will rain tomorrow’ or ‘boys will be boys’, and 2. volition, that is the speaker’s wish that something occur: ‘I’ll give you a hand’ or ‘you will do as I say!’. in exactly the same way modal phrases, like ‘going to’ express these two kinds of meaning. So, 1. prediction: ‘it’s going to rain tomorrow’ and 2.intention: ‘I’m going to call the police’. In other words, both ‘will’ and ‘going to’ express both predictability and volition/intention. But with subtle differences: ‘going to’ is a present continuous form, implying some connection with the present. In the case of prediction, the connection with the present is typically — but not always — some kind of present evidence. In the case of intention, the connection with the present is typically — but not always — the fact that the intention has a ready been made and is in the process of being realised: “I’m going to spend the holidays in Hawaii’.
Just to repeat: ‘will’ and ‘going to’ can both be used to express predictions, and they can both be used to talk about intentions or volition.in the case of predictions, there is much more interchangeability. In the case of volition/intention there tends to be a clear distinction between spontaneous as opposed to premeditated intentions.
As for present continuous, yes, it’s usually used for arrangements in the future. The example in your ‘data’ (I can’t access it now without risking losing this comment window) is not actually about the future but about the present, if I recall.
But it’s always good to air these issues and remind ourselves that the ‘rules’ are both awkwardly worded and clumsily applied.
Scott,
Thank you for your (characteristically) brilliant input and for providing a descriptive framework that does indeed account for, well, mostly any future occurrence under the sun:
“‘will’ and ‘going to’ can both be used to express predictions, and they can both be used to talk about intentions or volition. In the case of predictions, there is much more interchangeability.”
Unfortunately, the Murphyesque rules that we’ve been shoving down our students’ throats for decades now are nowhere near as comprehensive and accurate, which was the raison d’être of this post. In other words, some of these nine examples do fly in the face of a few best-selling mainstream grammars and this is what I wanted to share with my readers.
As to last example, I’ve just re-watched the scene and Leonard does say “that is going on twitter right now” BEFORE he reaches for the phone, which is a sort of spontaneous future decision, right? I wonder how other readers would react to this particular scene.
Luiz,
AWESOME post. I really appreciate you doing the work to put this together and for your thoughtful comments and questions. I’m asking my students to have a look at this.
However, I tend to agree with much of Scott has written. For me, I can defend many forms of these quotes using the models we’ve all learned how to teach. It just depends on the point of view of the speaker which an observer may never actually know. And we all have different points of view. What I mean by that is “That is going on Twitter right now” seems fine to me because he is in the process of writing the message. He has his phone in his hand.
And also for the same sentence, I think it perfectly fine if he had said, “That’s going to go on Twitter right now”. (an intention which is in the process of being realized)
I’ve used your work here, combined with Scott Thornbury’s comments, to create a table of Scott’s comments broken out by usages and to include the exceptions he’s mentioned. And I’ve created another section where I wrote down the quotes from the clips you put together and listed alternatives and how they fit into the model which Scott describes.
Here’s a link of the summary: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aon3vqn2s8uHdGlxMVdRVmNVZjB3RUpZQ3lERzI1S2c.
I couldn’t have made this without you and Scott, so thank you both.
Thank YOU, Glenn, for your kind words and the tables you’ve created.
Luiz, how do you feel about using “will X going to” in gap filling exercises in a test? Is it fair to expect students will be able to identify the subtle differences between these two forms in sentences that have very little context?
Ricardo,
I think I can sum up my views by saying that context-poor gap fill is not a very good way to test or practice anything, especially when there are subtleties and shades of gray involved.
The fact that gap fill is easy to create, easy to manage and easy to check does not necessarily mean that it’s good language practice.
You might also want to check this post, which I wrote last year.
Interesting!
A question I’ve always had is how much the ‘variety’ of English matters. Once we had an open table grammar-talk at the school I worked with and a veteran Texan teacher said “We don’t have that in America”, meaning, it doesn’t make that much of a difference whether one uses ‘will’ or ‘going to’. In fact, now I realize we rarely used an American grammar book at the school, it was a given that the pedagogical grammar rules for future forms followed a Murphyish reductionist explanation; for the sake of practicality I guess.
Re: ‘That’s not gonna happen’, isn’t is always like this? I mean, isn’t is a big colloquial chunk whose grammar break down for the sake of grammatical understanding is sort of pointless? (I’m afraid I cannot formulate the question using linguists’ lingo).
Willy,
When I posted the link on Facebook, that was exactly the reaction I got: people started wondering whether this applied to American English only. Maybe a few hours sitting through dozens of episodes of a British sitcom might do the trick…
I agree that “That’s not gonna happen” can be viewed as a lexical chunk and perhaps should be taught as such. It’s perhaps not as strong, however, as “I’ll see what I can do”. I mean, we CAN say “That won’t happen” in pretty much the same contexts, right?
Thanks for stopping by!
Great Post .
I am EFL teacher .I get benefit from this post .you introduce valuable information about going to and will .
Thanks
Saeed,
Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate your kind words.
Great post! I guess one big problem we Brazilian EFL teachers have is that our learners here in Brazil do expect clear-cut explanations all the time – maybe due to the way we learn Portuguese at school. And in the case of Future forms, there is no clear cut as we can see in Scott’s well put explanations. So, using authentic materials can help us show the interchangeability between the forms and perhaps generate more food for thought, which is always welcome.
Marcos,
Thanks for your input.
You’re right – authentic material can and should help broaden teachers’ and students’ horizons as far as linguistic rules are concerned.
Um abraço
Excellent work guys! Grammar books, I believe, are the worst way to learn to learn a language. First, the rules are hard to remember. Then “IF” someone is capable of remembering so many rules, they’ll hear exceptions in real life and on TV. On top of that, you get contradictary rules, or rules that are just not adhered to, even by colledge educated professionals.
Based on other sources, I was coming the same conclusion as Scott mentioned, but so nice to already have it here!
Proof from Big Bang Theory– excellent!
I would love to see more!!!
Thank you, Andrew.
I’m not sure, though, that grammar books are “the worst way” to learn a language. I do believe they play an important role in many students’ learning processes.
They can’t be, however, the be-all and end-all of all learning experiences.
Thank you for stopping by.
oops, i put a “d” in college (I need reading glasses)