Projection language
Eight expressions. Match each to the job it does.
Four positions in a life
A · Inês, nineteen
In September I will be living in Lisbon, in a room I have not seen, with two people I have not met. Everybody keeps asking whether I am excited and the honest answer is that I cannot picture it at all, which is not the same as being frightened.
By the time I finish I will have spent four years doing something I chose at seventeen on fairly thin information. That is the part nobody says out loud. Ask me again in a year.
B · Tiago, thirty-four
The way things are going, in five years I will be doing this same job with a slightly better chair. I have been here six years. By 2031 I will have been here eleven, and eleven is the number at which people stop asking why you left and start asking why you stayed.
What I notice is that I have stopped making plans and started making projections. A plan is something you intend. A projection is something you watch approaching. Something will have to give, and on current form it will not be me.
C · Fernanda, fifty-two
I was made redundant in March, after nineteen years, and for six weeks I could not project anything at all. The future had been a corridor and then it was a field.
What I have found since is that I had been describing my life in terms of that job for so long that I no longer had another way of describing it. I am learning one. By the end of this year I will have done three things I would not have done in March, and none of them is a career.
Barring anything unexpected, in five years I will be working, and it will not be at anything I can currently name. That used to be a frightening sentence. It is now merely an accurate one.
D · Alberto, seventy-one
People assume that at my age you look back more than forward. In my experience you look at both, and forward is the more interesting one, because it is shorter and therefore easier to see.
By March I will have been married for forty-eight years. That is not an achievement; it is a duration, and treating it as an achievement is how people end up bored.
Next year we will be moving to a flat with no stairs, which we have been discussing for four years and which we will do in about six weeks now that it has been said out loud. That is how most decisions in my life have gone: four years of nothing, then a fortnight.
Seven statements. Decide which speaker each is true of. A speaker may be the answer more than once.
A Inês, 19
B Tiago, 34
C Fernanda, 52
D Alberto, 71
1. Distinguishes between intending something and watching it approach.
2. Says a long period of time is a fact rather than a credit.
3. Describes losing the vocabulary for their own life along with a job.
4. Reports being unable to picture something, and separates that from fear.
5. Names a number at which other people’s question changes.
6. Argues that a shorter future is easier to see, not harder.
7. Says a sentence that used to be frightening has become merely accurate.
What each form was doing, and how it sounds
Go back through the four extracts and read only the futures. I will be living in Lisbon · I will have spent four years · I will be doing this same job · I will have been here eleven · I will have done three things · I will be working · I will have been married for forty-eight years · we will be moving.
Every continuous puts the speaker inside a future time, looking around. Every perfect puts them at a future point, looking back. Not one of them is simply will.
Say it, don’t read it. A projection has two parts and they get two intonation units, with a small break between them.
By March ⟋ I’ll have been married for forty-eight years. The vantage phrase rises slightly and holds; the main clause falls. Run them together and the listener has to work out the position after hearing the event, which is the wrong way round.
And the auxiliaries stay weak: I’ll’ve been is /aɪləv bɪn/. Three words, no stress on any of them.
Four sentences have been removed from a fifth account. Put each one back where it belongs.
I turn forty in November, which everybody has decided is significant on my behalf. [1]
The thing I actually notice is smaller. Ten years ago I made a five-year plan and I have never once looked at it since. [2] What I did instead was drift competently, which is not the same as failing and is not the same as choosing.
[3] By the time I am fifty I will either have done that or I will have spent another decade explaining why not, and I know which of those two people I would rather be sitting with.
So: this time next year I will be doing something I have chosen out loud, in front of a witness. [4]
Same lives, your forms
Two to four words per gap. Every gap is a future form. The vantage phrase in the sentence tells you which.
In September Inês in Lisbon with two people she has never met. By the time she finishes, she four years on a subject she chose at seventeen. Tiago says that by 2031 he at the company for eleven years, and that in five years he the same job with a better chair. Fernanda says that by the end of the year she three things she would not have done in March. Alberto and his wife to a flat with no stairs next year.
Six sentences drawn from the same four lives. One error each.
1. By the time she finishes she will spend four years on it.
2. In September she will live in a room she has not seen. — inside that time
3. By 2031 he will has been there eleven years.
4. Next year they will be move to a flat with no stairs.
5. By March he will be married for forty-eight years. — looking back from March
6. By the end of the year she will have did three new things.
Take one of them five years on
Task card · Speaking · Pairs · 3 minutes each, twice
Choose one of the four. Speak as them, five years after the extract, in the first person.
Three minutes. What happened, what is going on now, and what will by then already be over.
- Open with where you are standing: it is 2031 and I am…
- Use at least one will be doing and one will have done, projecting from there.
- Say one thing that turned out to be true from the original extract, and one that did not.
- Do not give them a dramatic five years. Ordinary is harder and more interesting.
Listener’s job. Write down every vantage phrase you hear — by then, by the time, this time next year, in five years — and the tense that followed each one.
At the end, read the pairs back. Where a vantage phrase was followed by a plain will, say so: the position was set and then not used.
Position set, position used
Two questions.
1. When a vantage phrase was followed by a plain will, what had happened?
2. Which was easier to produce: will be doing or will have done?
Set it, then use it
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. What does a vantage phrase do?
2. How is I’ll have been pronounced?
Next. The two forms in full — including the three separate jobs of the future continuous, one of which has nothing to do with time at all.