One of the more advanced tenses in the English language just so happens to be one of my favorite tenses to teach – The Future Perfect Tense.
It’s considered advanced because of the layers of complexity.
– The first layer would be understanding how the Perfect Aspect works and what it communicates.
– Then we add the fact that we’re applying these aspects to a future time.
So if you have a working understanding of the Present Perfect Tense and how to use it, then you have a really good foundation to learn the Future Perfect Tense.
Watch the video below for a video lesson on the Future Perfect, or you can just scroll down below to the transcript of the video.
In this lesson, I’m going to teach you what you need to know to understand the Future Perfect. And by the end:
How to form the future perfect
The tense is formed by combining the Future auxiliary verb [Will] to the Perfect [Have Done].
Now, let’s bring in the example diagram below.
In the diagram, you can see the timeline.
– There is a start to the time of reference, and a deadline.
– Actions occur and finish in that space of time or before the deadline.
These attributes are contained within the 4 example sentences.
the difference between the future simple and the future perfect
There are 4 Aspects for each time tense in English.
In the diagram below, you can see that as we go down the inverted pyramid, each aspect becomes more and more explicit.
- The Future Simple is general. It simply states that in the future, something will happen – a simple prediction of a completed action.
- The Future Perfect is more explicit as to the timing of the actions completed. More simply, the actions happen before the expected time or deadline.
So, let’s see how the Future Simple and the Future Perfect Differ.
Future Time Expressions
For Starters, let’s see how time expressions for the Future Simple and Future Perfect are different.
The diagram below, shows that [at the time] represents a Future Simple or Continuous Tense. The action completes or may be in progress at the time.
– I’ll join you at the restaurant at 6 pm.
– I’ll be doing some interviewing for the job at 1 pm.
On the other hand, [by the time] means the actions will have taken place before the time of reference.
- By the time I get home, I’ll have run all my errands.
Perfect Time Expressions
By the time, is definitely the most common of the Future Perfect time expressions. However, there are a few others you need to know as well. Have a look at the diagram below:
Aspects of the Future Perfect
You can think of the Future Perfect as a kind of metaphor for a driver on a long journey.
The below graphic shows that the traveller is in the middle of the trip.
- The miles he has already driven are can be described as Present Perfect. He has finished those miles before his present location.
- However, his journey will be finished sometime in the future.
- Along the way, he will have travelled even further.
- He’ll have made more stops along the way.
Another note on the aspect is that the Future Perfect does not only start from the present.
- The activity might have already started – Past to Future.
- It might start from the current time – Present to Future.
- Or t might not have started yet. It will start in the future, and finish further in the future.
Reasons to use the Future Perfect
English Grammar tenses don’t only tell us the action and the time, but in many cases the tense also expresses or communicates some of its aspect to the listener. What I mean is we take meaning from the tense itself – the tense transmits some meaning in and of itself.
The Perfect tenses [Past, Present, and Future] all do this in 3 ways.
- The perfects help us express the Cumulative Aspect. The perfect tenses basically ask or answer the question of [how much or how many] + [over time.
Let’s see an example of this:
2. They (the perfects) also help us to emphasize the Action Sequence. A perfect action basically means the action before.
So, in an action sequence (a sentence with 2 actions that occurred at separate times), the perfect action is the first action that happened -> First (perfect), Then (simple). Observe:
3. This next aspect is actually an extension of number 2 – The Cause and Effect Aspect.
As an English teacher, this is something I wish books explained more simply. The perfect tenses help us express Cause and Effect, because the cause action naturally comes before the effect action. And as stated before, the perfect is on the action before. Let’s see one final example:
Roundup
As I mentioned at the end of the YouTube video (that you can still watch if you already haven’t), the Future Perfect tense is best used to talk about your To-Do lists and their future deadline.
Here’s a question that you can answer as practice in the comment below:
Q: What all will you have done by the end of today?
Please leave your answers down in the comments to this post.
Practice Makes Perfect
If you want to get some great practice using this future tense, I can recommend you get yourself a good self-study grammar practice book.
The book I often use with my Business English students is Grammar for Business, and it has some excellent exercises on The Future Perfect and Future Continuous, as well as most of the other important grammar elements. And it was made with for adult learners with an emphasis on business.
You can get yourself a copy here:
And don’t forget to download your free study guide PDF on the Future Perfect here. It is a collection of my diagrams on this topics and should be completed while you watch the YouTube video lesson, or after you have read through this post. It is a visual teaching aid that I’ve made just for you so go ahead and grab that here.
Or why not subscribe to my email list and get these posts all at once to your inbox as soon as they are published.
time for revision
At this point, the best thing to do is go back and read/watch the lesson on the Present Perfect.
Try and understand these two together and it will take your knowledge of English to the next level.
That’s all for now. Until next time!
