This is an All Ears English podcast episode 1919.

You will have mastered future perfect English grammar by the end of this episode.

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adventurer, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.

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By the time you finish this episode, you will have stopped avoiding this advanced grammar

point.

Are you busy?

Do you end up arriving places when the event has already taken place?

Find out how to use the future perfect in English and reduce your daily commitments

to be less stressed.

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Thanks for listening to the podcast.

Hello Aubrey.

How’s it going?

I’m great.

How are you?

Happy to be here recording today on the microphone.

It’s always my favorite part of the week.

So what are you up to today?

Oh, I have a friend meeting me here for lunch, but no worries.

We’ll have finished recording before she arrives.

Well good to know.

Good to know.

Because I don’t want to hear you chewing on the microphone.

With a friend sitting here out of view, and we’re both eating, that’d be a little awkward.

Don’t mind me.

But you’ll notice in my answer there, I shared a grammar structure that’s a little complicated

to say we’ll have finished recording before she arrives.

Guys, this is future perfect.

You want it.

You have surely used it before.

You have heard it before.

Now you know what it’s called and how it’s formed.

I think this is going to be really interesting so that, yeah, you can make sure to use it

in the future.

Yeah, super excited and happy to be getting into grammar.

We’re going to try to get into more grammar for you guys in 2023, but in the same fun

connection not perfection way we do on All Ears English.

I think our listeners are ready for that.

They’re wanting that.

Yeah.

Yes, definitely.

You guys know it’s not all about grammar.

You don’t want to be stressed about every mistake, but I know you guys are interested

in improving your grammar because you’re at that level.

So we’re going to give you the information you need to get there.

But again, with the focus, like you said, Lindsay, of connecting in English.

Yes, I love it.

So do we need to send our listeners back to any old episodes to get ready for today?

Yes, this was a very recent one.

Episode 1881, we answered the first half of today’s listener question.

This was from Julie Tang, and it was such an interesting question, but needed a few

episodes to really answer it fully.

So that one was called Past Perfect Grammar for Clarifying in English, because she asked

about past perfect and also future perfect.

Okay, so today’s kind of like a second part of that episode, right?

100 episodes, or not 100, about 30 episodes later, we’re back, right, with part two, talking

about what exactly, Aubrey?

Yeah, so we’re going to talk about how we use the future perfect tense, which, just

to break this down, it’s an action that will finish sometime in the future before some

other event in the future.

So this is all about future, right, but it is a perfect tense.

So the construction is a little tricky.

We want to really break it down so that you guys understand how we form it.

Yeah, and I think I just used this on an episode we just finished recording, where I said something

like by the time this episode comes out, we will have finished the midterm elections,

right?

We will have already had the midterm election.

So let’s get into it.

Let’s get into it.

Yes, right.

So we do use that, will have, right?

When we’re looking back from a point in time in the future, we’re sort of imagining ourselves

in the future after these elections have finished, and we’re talking about it.

So for example, I might say, oh, I’ll have finished dinner by the time you get home,

right?

If someone’s late getting home from work, and I’m eating by myself, I’ll have finished

dinner by the time you get home.

Just pick yourself up something.

Yes, exactly, exactly.

And what do we say about don’t bother?

What are we saying here?

I’m not clear.

Yeah, so we often use this to say don’t bother, like in that case, right?

If I’m saying, you’re not going to be home by the time I’ve finished, so like, you know,

maybe if we’re at a restaurant, and someone’s asking, like, have you ordered?

I’m on my way, you might say, like, don’t come because we’ll have finished by the time

you get here.

So it’s another, it’s sort of a kind way of saying don’t bother to come to use this future

perfect tense.

It’s kind of very current.

And it makes sense.

I mean, especially for a busy household where for you, you have kids doing soccer and this

and that and sports, and everyone’s all over the place, right?

So I imagine you use this a lot because people’s schedules are coinciding and colliding with

each other, not always lining up, right?

And friends like busy moms who like, oh, we want to meet for happy hour, but you got to

take your kid here and there.

So by the time I get there, you guys may have finished eating, should I bother coming?

Definitely, when you’re trying to arrange schedules, this comes up all the time.

Yeah, now that we’re kind of moving out of the health crisis, we’re all back out there

in the world again, you know, living our lives.

And so we use this more and more often.

Interesting.

But today, I love Aubrey, how you’ve prepared this episode by breaking this grammar down,

because the whole point is connection.

And we want to help you guys, you know, slow down and really understand this with us today,

right, Aubrey?

So three layers.

Are we going to do three layers of grammar?

Exactly, right, especially where you’re listening to this on a podcast, or maybe on YouTube,

you can’t see the words written, we really want to make this clear.

So for each sentence that has future perfect, there are sort of three chunks or three layers.

We’re going to talk about each one and build the sentence as we go so that hopefully it’ll

be a visual, even though you’re listening to a podcast.

All right, well, let’s start building.

So what is the first layer that we need to know?

Yeah, so each sentence that has future perfect starts with the subject and then will have

and the past participle.

And this is the same for every subject.

So that makes it a little easy, right?

I will have eaten, we will have eaten.

So you have the subject, I, you, we will have and then whatever your past participle is.

Okay, or she will have left, right, by the time she arrives at the restaurant, her friend

will have left or will have already eaten dessert or something, right?

Okay.

Exactly.

Love it.

Okay.

So the tricky thing is here, we’ve talked about this before, past participles can be

difficult.

There are irregular past participles.

It’s not always just adding ed.

So you do need to learn the past participles for each verb.

That’s key for the perfect tenses, past perfect, present perfect, future perfect, you have

to know the past participle.

Maybe someday we could do an episode like a fun little quiz game episode on past participles

for our listeners sometime and make it really fun and active and fast.

That could be kind of cool.

That could be kind of cool.

It would be fun.

And just as a note, the best way to learn past participles is just to take in a lot

of English because you probably, that sounded right to you that Lindsay said she will have

left.

If she said she will have leaved, no, that sounds terrible because you listen to our

podcast.

You listen to a lot of English.

Usually, you know what sounds correct as a past participle.

Yeah, guys, hit follow on All There’s English right now so that you don’t miss the next

episode.

And this is how most of our listeners have become nearly fluent is because they got addicted

to All There’s English and they listen four days a week and then they went back to all

the episodes.

You got it.

All right.

All right.

Let’s dive into the second chunk.

Yeah.

So we have, you know, we will have eaten.

What comes next is either before or by the time or when.

Some kind of time indicator, right?

So for example, we will have eaten before or we will have eaten by the time.

Okay, I love it.

Or we will have eaten when she arrives or something like that.

Yeah, she’ll have left when they arrive, right?

They’ll have left by the time.

So there is flexibility here, but these are the three we use most often before, by the

time and when to share that something will have happened by the time something else happens.

All right.

I love that.

So we’re building up these sentences one step at a time.

Let’s go into the third layer of the sentence here, Aubrey.

What is it?

Yes, it ends with present tense.

So for example, we’ll have eaten before you arrive.

So you have the subject and it’s always in present tense.

He’ll have eaten before she arrives.

Again, we have these three chunks.

We have the whole sentence here and it ends with present tense.

Good.

Or she’ll have left when he gets here.

Right?

Exactly.

Right.

So that’s the full sentence.

I hope for you guys, it now seems like this isn’t so tough.

Like when I understand the chunks, when I see what’s happening here, it’s pretty simple,

right?

Which is the goal so that you guys can now use it.

Okay, Aubrey, this is great.

We’ve layered out, you know, how to actually create this grammar.

What do we need to know in a simple nutshell here?

Yes.

So Julie’s question asks about will have versus would have.

So Julie, if you’re listening, I hope you are.

Never fear.

We’re going to share that soon because these again are very different, right?

In a nutshell, like you said, Lindsay, we use would have as the past tense of will have.

So today we’re talking about will have.

We will have done something.

And then we have the past tense of that too.

I would have done something.

And we also use would have in conditionals to talk about something that didn’t happen

in the past.

So that definitely is another episode to follow so that you don’t miss it because that’s really

fascinating to grammar to be able to use.

Yeah, that’s definitely grammar for another day, guys.

We try to take one little grammar piece at a time for you in small doses, right?

To make it fun and focus on that connection piece.

But I do want to know in a nutshell, let’s talk a little bit just for one second about

that phrase.

What does that mean?

Yeah, this is a really great idiom.

If you imagine an actual shell of a nut, like if you crack open a walnut and you have the

shell there, it’s quite small.

So if you imagine the information that could fit in that little nutshell would have to

really be the synopsis would have to be the most important details.

Yeah, that’s what we just shared about would have it would be a whole episode.

But we say in a nutshell, here’s the basics.

I love it.

So guys, make sure you hit follow to catch that other episode where we’ll get back to

that with would have and all those other ways to say that.

But for now, what do we have, Aubrey?

Yeah, we have a great role play here.

This is fun.

Lindsay, you have stepped into the hall to take a call from me.

You’re a co-worker.

Here we go.

I’ll start us out.

Okay.

Have you guys started the meeting?

Yes, they started 30 minutes ago.

They’ll have finished going over the agenda when I get back.

Oh boy.

I’m about 45 minutes out still.

I think it’ll have ended by the time you get here.

Oh, that’s a terrible feeling to be that late for a meeting.

You’re like, oh, no, it’ll be over before I ever get there.

Yeah, what a hard thing when you pack your schedule so full.

You know, you feel like this is always happening to you, right?

It’s an uncomfortable feeling.

You’re always running around.

Yeah, I know.

Especially I this happens to me a lot because I’m bad at prioritizing.

I’ll be like, I can get all of that done.

And then I really need to be reasonable and say, okay, this is going to have to give.

I can’t do all of this.

Yeah, it’s true.

It’s true.

We want to, yeah.

Committing to the right number of things in a day is the key.

What’s that art?

Right.

All right.

So what did I say?

I said here, they started 30 minutes ago.

They’ll have finished going over the agenda when I get back.

So they will have finished when I get back.

Yeah.

And just to note that we do almost always make a contraction between the subject and

will, they’ll have finished, I’ll have finished, right?

We rarely will say, I will have finished.

It’s going to be I’ll, they’ll, she’ll always.

I love it.

And then what would be the next one?

And then you said, I think it’ll have ended by the time you get here, right?

So we have, it will have ended by the time you get here.

Yeah.

And I also want to make sure our listeners know this is not the only way to express this,

right?

Sometimes a native speaker might say, they’ll be done when you get back.

I might be more likely, honestly, to say that.

They’ll be done by the time you get back.

Yeah, for sure.

And I think this happens a lot too, if people are not positive that they’re using Future

Perfect correctly, sometimes we’ll almost edit ourselves and be like, oh, am I saying

that right?

I’m just going to say, they’re going to be done by the time you get here.

Other ways to say, or the last one, you know, I think it’ll be over by the time you get

here.

Right.

So, and I don’t know if it’s just, if people aren’t sure if it’s right, what they’re saying.

I think it’s also just laziness a little bit or what’s more accessible.

And more informal.

For sure, I think that sounds a little more informal to say, it’s going to be over by

the time you get here.

It does sound a little formal to use that Future Perfect.

And it just takes a lot of time to say it.

The grammar is a little long-winded.

More syllables.

Right.

Yes.

But the important thing is we want you guys to know how to do it.

So what’s the takeaway for our listeners today?

Well, first, I just noticed in the role play, there’s a little bonus I want to share very

quickly.

When I said, I was saying that I was 45 minutes away, I said, oh, I’m 45 minutes out.

And this is so native and natural, instead of saying, I’m still 45 minutes away, I still

have 45 minutes to drive.

We say, I’m 45 minutes out, which is really native.

I’m glad you said that.

I didn’t even notice that.

But that is so natural.

So natural.

I’m 45 minutes out.

Such a great other way to say away.

Yeah.

Good bonus.

Right.

So yeah, for a takeaway, guys, it’s super helpful to be aware of all of these different

verb tenses.

But again, don’t let it derail you.

Do not ever hesitate to talk with someone in English and make that connection because

you’re worried about making a grammar mistake, right?

Don’t let that stop you.

Don’t let that stress you out.

There is value.

It is worth trying to improve your grammar, knowing why we use which tense when, but don’t

let it keep you from a valuable connection.

Yes.

And on the lifestyle side, think about when you’re over committing.

So this doesn’t always happen to you.

So that you’re not missing everything, right?

That’s always done by the time you arrive.

Try to avoid that.

Right.

See, what is that sweet spot of the right number of things in a day where you’re fulfilled,

you feel busy, but you’re not missing everything, right?

Yes.

Right.

Who knew grammar could help us with our lifestyle goals?

I love it.

So good.

So good.

All right, guys, hit follow if you love All Ears English and Aubrey, I’ll see you again

very soon.

Awesome.

Thanks, Lindsay.

See ya.

Bye.

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