Do you have a minute to spare to learn some English? Saskia’s going to tell us how to use the future in the past! Give us 60 seconds and we’ll give you the English.
Saskia
Sometimes we want to talk about something we thought would happen in the future at a point in the past. We’ll look at how to do this now.
To do this, we use past versions of future forms.
Will becomes would. Yesterday I said I would go to the park.
Going to becomes was going to. Like this: The last time I saw you, you were going to start a new job. What’s it like?
The present continuous becomes the past continuous. Last week you were visiting your family the day after I saw you. How did it go?
So to recap: will becomes would, going to becomes was going to and the present continuous becomes the past continuous.
At the start, I said we’d look at how to talk about the future in the past. And now we have. Bye!
The future in the past
The future in the past
We use the future in the past to talk about a future event from a past point in time. To do this we use past versions of future forms.
Will
Will becomes would
- Yesterday I said I would go to the park.
Going to
Be going to becomes was going to
- The last time I saw you, you were going to start a new job.
Present Continuous
The present continuous tense (be + verbing) becomes the past continuous (was / were + verbing).
- Last week you were visiting your family the day after I saw you.