Using JUST for Actions in the Near Future - Basic English Grammar

hi everybody my name is Alisha in this

lesson I'm going to talk about how to use the word just to talk about actions

that are going to happen in the future very very soon so let's get started in

this lesson though I'm going to use a timeline to show actions that start or

are going to start in the future the very recent future and actions which

perhaps have already started but are going to finish in the very near future

so I'm going to do this by explaining to maybe common patterns that we can use

with just to explain these sorts of events before I start that though I do

want to just do a quick reminder about the word just so we use the word just as

I'm going to explain in these example sentences as kind of an emphasis word we

use it to emphasize an activity or an action that's very very close to the

present time so something that could be in the past or something that could be

in the future we can use just for both of these in this lesson I'm going to

focus on actions that are in the future so let's begin with the first example

pattern okay the first pattern that I have here is a subject plus a version of

the verb to be plus just plus the word just and then about so about is going to

give us even more emphasis about something that's going to happen in the

future very very near to the future then we follow this with a two form of the

verb or the infinitive form of the verb to plus the verb finally we'll end the

sentence with any extra information that you may need to include so let's look at

a couple of examples of this this pattern the first one we are just about

to leave the house here my subject is we my be verb is our in this case to match

the subject here the same pattern just about two and then my

verb here is leave just about to leave the house so in this situation we the

people in the subject of the sentence are very very soon going to leave the

house this is an action that's going to happen soon we are just about to leave

the house so here we pair just with about before the verb let's look at

another example here my subject is she so she is in this case is is the form of

the be verb she is just about to start the meeting

so in this case the meeting is going to start very soon in the future one more

example sentence I am in this case M is my be verb I am just about to have

dinner so this means in the fit in the very near future I am going to have

dinner so each of these sentences communicates an action that has not

started yet but in the very near future it's going to start or it's going to

happen so on a timeline we can imagine if this is the present point here in the

middle and this is my future we can imagine that these actions are going to

happen very very soon in the future so something that's going to start sooner

an action that's going to occur soon we can use this kind of pattern to talk

about that okay so let's take a look at the second pattern that I prepared this

one is perhaps a little bit less common than this pattern but I want to

introduce it for a couple of different reasons so let's take a look at the

pattern first so similar to the first pattern we have the subject of the

sentence plus B plus just however after this just I have the ing form of the

verb this is the continuous form or the progressive form of the verb following

that we have just any extra information you may need to communicate so let's

take a look at a few examples here I've actually just changed these sentences

into this pattern here so again we have this we are just as I did here we

are in this case just plus my verb my to verb from this sentence to leave becomes

leaving in the continuous tense we are just leaving the house is my first

pattern so this sentence actually shows that perhaps the speaker was already in

the action was already in the process of leaving the house however the action is

not yet complete let's look at another example though she is just starting the

meeting here so again my first sentence in this pattern was she is just about to

start the meeting meaning it's going to start in the future here she is just

starting the meeting shows maybe she in the sentence the subject has just

recently very very recently started the process of the meeting and she is maybe

doing introductory remarks in this case or introducing the agenda for some house

she's in the process of beginning the meeting but that beginning process is

not finished yet okay let's look at one more example I am just having dinner so

here I had to have in the first pattern in this sentence with the progressive or

the continuous tense I have haven't here so I'm just having dinner so in other

words I'm probably in the process of eating right now but I am not finished

yet so the difference between this pattern and this pattern is that these

actions have already started but they are not quite finished yet rather

they're going to be finished in the near future this is kind of the nuance of

this grammar so to visualize this a little bit differently from our first

pattern we can imagine that these are actions which in the present at the

point in time when the speaker explains things the actions are in progress at

this point in time however they are not finished yet in the future however in

the near future they're going to be finished so this is sort of the

difference between these two one action as in the first pattern we looked at is

going to happen in the near future one action down

here in the second pattern is already in progress but it's going to finish in the

near future so this is a very very small difference I think but if you like if

you want to emphasize that something is already happening you can use the

progressive form to do that okay so I have just yeah a couple of

quick sort of summaries of each of these points that you can consider so point

one is for near future actions it's going to start and maybe finish in the

near future the second one is for actions that have started and will

complete in the near future so some of you might be wondering like what about

using past tense like the verb be here I've used the present tense here what

about using past tense or how do I talk about something that already started or

something that was in the past I'll explain that in a separate lesson in a

different lesson so please keep an eye out for that

but if you want to talk about actions that are going to start soon or that

have already started and are going to finish soon you can try using one of

these patterns to explain that all right so just a few points and a few patterns

for how you can use just to explain actions that are coming up so I hope

that this lesson was useful for you if you have any questions please be sure to

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good resources thanks very much for watching this video and I will see you

again next time bye

you