Lesson Transcript

Hi, everybody. My name is Alisha. In this lesson, I'm going to talk about how to use "by the time" with future perfect grammar structures. Let's get started.
Okay. The first thing I want to do in this lesson is talk about future perfect tense. I want to review this grammar point. So, we use future perfect tense to express an action or a condition that will continue into the future, or it will end or complete at a point in the future. So, future perfect tense relates to future points in time. When we make future perfect tense sentences, we follow this pattern for the basic future perfect structure. We have subject plus "will have," and the past participle form of the verb. This makes a simple positive future perfect tense sentence. So, "I will have eaten," or "She will have slept." These make future perfect sentence structures. When we use "won't," we create a negative future perfect tense sentence. So, "She won't have eaten," or "He won't have slept." So, we use this as the base for our future perfect sentence to mark a continuing action, however. So, a future action continuing into the future, we can do that with this sentence structure. We use subject plus "will have," and then, "been," plus the -ing form of the verb. So, for example, "She will have been eating," or "He will have been sleeping," and so on. To make this structure negative, we put "won't" before "have been." So, again, "He won't have been sleeping," or "She won't have been working." So, we use this to mark actions in the future that are continuing, or that we expect will continue.
The last structure I want to introduce is the question structure. So, with future perfect tense questions, we start with a question word and it's kind of more common to use questions like these. Like, "how much," or "how many," or how long. We use these kinds of question words at the beginning of our question patterns. To continue, we then use "will," plus our subject in this position, and then "have" and the past participle verb form to make a basic question, a basic future tense question. Or, if we want to make a continuous question, we end it with "have been," verb -ing. So, "How long will he have been," something, something, -ing. Or, "How much will she have," something, something. So, we can use this pattern to make questions with future perfect tense. So, we're going to see some examples of these later used together with the "by the time" expression.
Okay. So, with this in mind, with this grammar refresher in our mind, let's look at "by the time." And then, let's look at how we use these grammar points together. So, "by the time" is the focus expression for this lesson. We use "by the time" to express that an action or a condition will end, complete, or change by a certain point. The action will end, complete, or change by a certain point. So, we can use "by the time" in the past or in the future. In today's lesson, we are focusing on using this with future expressions. So, future perfect tense expressions. So, we know that "by the time" is talking about some action or some condition that is going to finish, right? It's going to end or it's going to change. So, what does this look like when we put this together with future perfect tense? Reminder, we use future perfect tense to talk about an action that we expect is going to end at some point in the future or is going to continue into the future and maybe continue after a certain point in the future. So, what does this look like with "by the time," and why is it important?
Let's take a look at this timeline here. So, we have the past here, present is here, this star, and the future is here, in this direction. So, for today's grammar, we're looking at this point here, we're focusing on the future. So, our first grammar point, future perfect tense, is here in red. Yeah? This wavy line is the future perfect action or condition. This blue point, here in the future, is the "by the time" point. So, what I hope this shows is that the future perfect action continues. Yes? So, if this is "now," right? This current moment now. Future perfect is expressing an action that is going to continue into the future. Maybe it started in the past, or maybe it started in the future, that's okay, depending on the sentence. But, we want to note, the action is going to continue into the future, and then, it may change, or stop, or complete at this "by the time" point. So, this "by the time" point, marks something of significance. Yeah? So, depending on what we want to communicate, there can be lots of different things that "by the time" tells us.
Okay. So, let's look at some examples of these two points together, and see why they're important, and how we can use them to talk about our future plans. Okay. So, let's look at some examples. Future perfect plus "by the time."
Here's the first example sentence. "By the time I graduate from college, I will have studied in schools for 16 years." "By the time I graduate from college, I will have studied in schools for 16 years." So, let's break this sentence down. First, we have the "by the time" expression. So, here, "By the time I graduate from college…" So, this point, graduating from college, is our key point in the future. This is a future moment, a future point in time, here. Then, our future perfect portion is this, "I will have studied in schools for 16 years." "I will have studied in schools for 16 years." So, that means this action, in total, will be 16 years at this point.
So, why is this important? Right now, the speaker or the writer, is expressing this idea in the present. Yeah? So, that means the speaker has not graduated from college, yet. The speaker is going to graduate in the future, right? So, "By the time I graduate from college," this will be true. That means this is not true now, right? So, maybe now, the speaker has studied for only 15 years, or 14 years, or something like that. They want to mention this point in time, this future point in time, and the total time studied from the beginning until this future point in time. This is what we can do with "by the time" and future perfect tense together. We can talk about future points in time and their relationship to our past continuing experiences. Okay.
So, let's look at another example of this here. "We will have been waiting for three hours by the time the plane arrives." So, once more, "We will have been waiting for three hours by the time the plane arrives." Okay. So, first, you might notice that this sentence swaps or switches the order of the two ideas, right? We have the future perfect part at the beginning of the sentence, and the "by the time" part at the end of the sentence. This is totally fine. It's up to you what you want to emphasize here. In this sentence, we have this "waiting" at the beginning of the sentence. It has a little more emphasis. So, this expresses, "We will have been waiting for three hours." So, this is our continuing action. Yes. And, our "by the time" condition, or "by the time" situation, is here. "By the time the plane arrives…" So, here's the present, the speaker is talking in the present about this future point. "By the time the plane arrives, our total waiting time will be three hours." So, that means maybe now, we have been waiting for one hour, or maybe 90 minutes, or something like that. But, to talk about this specific point in the future, the total time in the future, will be three hours. So, we use this future perfect tense structure and our "by the time" structure to communicate this. It's like saying the total time in this future moment will be this "three hours," in this case. Okay?
So, let's look at one more example sentence. And then, I want to talk a little bit about some interesting grammar that we see in these examples. So, let's look at this next one. "By the time he quits his job, he will have been working for that company for 10 years." Once more, "By the time he quits his job, he will have been working for that company for 10 years." Okay. So, in this sentence, we have our "by the time" at the beginning, again. So, here is our future point, "By the time he quits his job…" "By the time he quits his job…" So, he has not quit his job yet, but he's planning to. That's what this sentence communicates. He has not quit his job yet, but he's planning to. And, here is our future perfect information, "he will have been working for that company for 10 years." So, this condition will have continued for 10 years. So, at this future point in time, the total will be 10 years of this condition. So, maybe now it's only eight years or nine years. But, we want to talk about it in reference, or in relation to, this future plan, by the time he quits his job.
Okay. So, I hope that this gives you a good understanding of what we can use these two points together to do. Let's talk about a couple interesting grammar points now. Maybe you've noticed here in these "by the time" sections right here in blue, there's kind of interesting grammar. Right? So, they start with "by the time," "by the time," "by the time." And then, we have the subject, right? So, "I," or "the plane," or "he," right? Notice then the verb form that's used. So, "I graduate," "the plane arrives," and "he quits." So, a couple things to notice here. Even though, or although, we're talking about a future point, we do not use "will," or "going to," or an -ing verb here. We don't use any kind of future tense verb in this position. You can use this instead in the same way you would use a present tense verb, right? The very, very basic present tense verb conjugation. "I graduate," "it arrives," "he quits," right? So, we do not need to use a future tense expression here. For example, sometimes, I see learners use "By the time I will graduate from college," and this is incorrect. Or, "By the time I'm going to graduate from college," also incorrect. We don't need to use, and we should not use a "will," or "going to," or something like that, in this position here. So, after your subject here, just use the verb form in the same conjugation you would use for a simple present tense structure.
Okay. The second point that I want to talk about is a common question that comes up about "by the time." And the question is, "Can we use 'when' in the same way as we use 'by the time'?" And the answer is sometimes. So, "by the time" and "when" can sometimes be used in the same position to create grammatically correct sentences. However, it can change the feeling of the sentence. So, let's look at an example. I'll show you what I mean. Let's look at the second example sentence here. "We will have been waiting for three hours by the time the plane arrives." If we replace "by the time" with "when," the sentence becomes, "We will have been waiting for three hours when the plane arrives." So, this doesn't have the same kind of feeling of continuing action, or some kind of total action, total time waiting in this case. It's sort of more like a report of something that happened. Like, "when the plane arrives" and "we will have been waiting" happened kind of at the same time. It doesn't have that same feeling of something that happened, or that continuously happened, leading up to this point in time.
So, let's take a look at another example sentence here. If we change "by the time" out, and use "when" instead, the sentence becomes, "When I graduate from college, I will have studied in schools for 16 years." So, this also, we have no communication problem here. We understand what the speaker is saying. "When I graduate from college, I will have studied in schools for 16 years." But, because we don't have this "by the time" here, we don't have that same feeling of kind of building up the years of study. So, the "when" use, kind of gives a feeling of just two things happening at the same time. The "by the time" expression gives us more of a sense of something that was continuing for a long time, or maybe something that we worked on for a long time. So, if you want to communicate that kind of nuance, that kind of feeling, I would recommend you use the "by the time" pattern, instead of the "when" pattern.
Okay. So, with that said, let's take a look at our last example sentence for this video. This one uses a question pattern. Okay. So, let's look. "By the time you move to your new house, how long will you have lived in this city?" "By the time you move to your new house, how long will you have lived in this city?" Okay. So, here is our "by the time" expression, "By the time you move to your new house…" So, this is a future point in time, an expected future point in time. "By the time you move to your house…" And then, we have a question, "how long will you have lived in this city?" "How long will you have lived in the city?" So, the speaker is asking a question about this period of time. The speaker doesn't know how long this arrow is. So, the "how long" question asks the total duration of time here. So, they could say, "Oh, I will have lived here for 10 years," "I will have lived here for five years, in this city." So, that makes the length of this line five years, right? So, again, when we're using this "by the time" structure, we're communicating this idea of something that's kind of a collection of experiences maybe, or it's something that we had gathered over time, like experiences.
So, we couldn't use, "When you moved to your new house, how long will you have lived in this city?" and communicate the same feeling. This "by the time" kind of shows that there's more than just this one moment, right? It's kind of like a recognition of many different past experiences, if that makes sense. So, this is how we can use a question in one of these "by the time" patterns.
Okay? so I hope that this lesson helped you understand how we use "by the time" together with future perfect tense to talk about future situations, future actions, and their relationship to our continuing actions in the past. As I said earlier, yes, we can use "by the time" in other tenses, like with past tense, for example. But, maybe I can talk about that in a different video.

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