FUTURE PERFECT CONTINUOUS TENSE
Future perfect continuous tense is used to denote an action that is continuing ‘at present’ and will be continuing ‘until a point of time in future’.
Let’s look at the idea that the following two sentences express.
James is watching T.V. He will be watching it by 6 P.M.
Here the two sentences express the idea that the ‘act of watching’ T.V is being done by James and the action will be continuing ‘by 6 P.M’.
To express this idea, we use future perfect continuous tense,
To write or say this idea in one sentence, we should write it in the pattern of Future perfect continuous tense, as shown below.
S + will/ shall + have + been + V+ing + O
As we know, ‘V+ing’ is used here to mention that the tense is a continuous tense. When a continuous tense is mentioned , ‘Be’ forms should be the auxiliary verbs to show in which tense the main verb is continuing. Here, from the title, the future perfect forms of ‘Be’ should be written, that is ‘will have been’ and ‘shall have been’. For our convenience, they are written together as ‘will/ shall + have + been’ in the pattern. So, here, ‘will/shall have been’ stands for ‘future perfect’ and ‘V+ing’ stands for ‘continuous’ in the title. Thus we get future perfect continuous tense.
eg: They shall have been playing Tennis by the evening.
S( They) + shall + have + been + play +ing ( V+ing) + O ( Tennis)
This example gives the idea that the act of playing Tennis being done now will be continuing until the evening.
So, we have studied the three tenses and their branches.
Now, it is the time to test ourselves. So, let’s try to answer the questions in Exercise-1 of the topic Tenses.