Teach The Future Continuous: A Free ESL Lesson Plan
Overview
Using the Present Continuous as a starting point, this lesson plan will help pre-intermediate students construct sentences such as “I’ll be eating at home.” In addition, students will practice using the Future Continuous with expressions of time.
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When should you teach the Future Continuous to ESL students?
It’s important to teach this topic at the right time. If you start teaching the Future Continuous too early, students can feel overwhelmed or demotivated. This lesson is designed for pre-intermediate students (B1 Level on the CEFR framework). Before you start this lesson, check the following:
- Can your students use the present continuous for actions in progress at the time of speaking?
- Can your students use the simple future with will?
- Have your students had exposure to the past continuous, for actions in progress at a point in the past?
If your students have done all of the above three points, then they are ready to learn the Future Continuous.
What is the Future Continuous?
To help your students identify the Future Continuous, they will be asked to look at a timeline and compare the following sentences:
- Sally is preparing her swimming gear now.
- Sally will start her training session at noon.
- At 12:30 pm, she will be swimming.
The final sentence is in the Future Continuous. This tense is used to describe an event that will be in progress at a specific time in the future. In this case, the action is “swimming” and the specific time in the future is “12:30 pm”. Importantly, this lesson will focus on talking about events that are already underway in the future.
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