Future Perfect Simple - Free ESL Resources!

In English, we use the future perfect simple to describe an event in the future that will be completed by a specified time (I will have finished work by the time you call). We have two lessons loaded ready for you to teach the future perfect simple to your ESL students loaded under the Verbs Simple category of our Teacher Tab.

We recommend teaching the future perfect simple to your ESL students after they are comfortable with other future forms (future with will, future with going to, future with the present continuous and future with the present simple). We begin our first lesson with a quick review of these future forms:

We then provide several illustrative examples of the use of the future perfect simple, using a number of timelines and picture based situations:

We then make special notes of accomplishment verbs. If you complete a goal, you accomplish it. We often use the future perfect simple to express accomplishment verbs (I will have finished my homework / I will have completed the lesson). We also make note of using the future perfect simple with ongoing states (when you get there, they will have been home for 2 hours). We also make note of the use of by/by the time/before with the future perfect simple (by the time I leave, I will have been waiting for 30 minutes).

In our second lesson, we make note of the typical conversational structure, of using a contraction to express the future perfect simple (I’ll have finished). We also make note of connected speech in conversational English that cannot be used in written English (I’ll’ve finished). We then introduce the negative form of the future perfect simple and offer your students a number of gapfill, which is correct and timeline exercises to practice the tense: