General English Level 5 V 3
UNIT 05 Technology TOPIC 02 The speed of change
LANGUAGE FOCUS 05 Speculating about the future
What do you think will happen in the future? Are you sure?
Lee and Jenny say:
Lee:
I wonder when the first commercial flight will be?
Jenny:
Mm, probably not before this baby is born, but I expect it won't be much longer.

Lee doesn't know what will happen, and he asks Jenny what she thinks will happen.

Jenny doesn't know for sure, so she speculates - she thinks about it and imagines what might happen.

When we want to speculate about the future, we can use these expressions: probably, I'm not sure, I expect, I think, maybe .

Example

Layla and Jenny say:
Layla:
What kind of musical equipment do you think we will have in the future?
Jenny:
I'm sure it will be small and wireless. We'll probably download music over the airways into our watches. When we want to listen, we'll maybe transmit to a small microchip behind our ears!



When we want to ask someone what they think about the future, we can say:

I wonder what will happen?
What do you think will happen?

When we speculate about the future, we use these expressions:



Examples

1 Read the examples.
2 Listen to the examples.
3 Practise saying each example. Use the Pause button.
I guess families will become smaller in the future.
He did well at the interview. I expect he will get the job.
It'll probably be OK if you do it this way.
I think cars will be able to fly one day.
Maybe in the future we will all work from home using a computer network.

Now go to 06 SURVEY Future changes.