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Unit 2: English In A Minute
Give us a minute and we'll teach you English

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Session 4

Welcome to English In A Minute. Give us a minute and we'll give you a hot tip about English. Grammar, vocabulary... there's so much to learn! And all taught by your favourite BBC Learning English staff!

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    Activity 1
  1. Activity 1

Activity 1

The future in the past

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.

Watch the video and complete the activity

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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.

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