What are you doing tomorrow
Which reply/ies would you predict most, pre-intermediate and up, ESL students, would spontaneously come up with outside the classroom?
What are you doing tomorrow?
a: I'm playing football.
b: I might play football.
c: I'll probably play football.
d: I'm probably playing football.
e: I'm going to play football.
f: X has asked me to play football.
g: Other/s
е: Students love the fixed phrase 'going to' and use it whenever there is a chance of a mistake...
It depends on the highest probability of intention to be playing football on the part of the person who is asked the question. Option (a) is pretty definite - that the budding Becks will guaranteed to be out there in the mud and rain doing his best for his local AFC. The same could be said for option (e) for that matter.
In class, I suspect they would be forced to answer (a) to match the structure of the question, while in reality all of the options would be acceptable as reasonable answers (except d, maybe. I don't like it).
They are all pretty likely for a native speaker. Don't know about students.
<<(except d, maybe. I don't like it). >>
And why?
<<(except d, maybe. I don't like it). >>
<<And why? >>
Because "I'm playing football tomorrow" sounds pretty definite to me, and so I guess I wouldn't use "probably" in that example... I usually use "will" with probably: "I'll probably do this, that, etc. tomorrow"
<<Because "I'm playing football tomorrow" sounds pretty definite to me, and so I guess I wouldn't use "probably" in that example... I usually use "will" with probably: "I'll probably do this, that, etc. tomorrow">>
The "is probably + verb-ing" is very common in English, Guest.
Is Guest saying that we can not qualify definite statements in English?