By the end of next month, he will have been teaching at this school.

Share on Facebook

Anonymous

#370699 Sat, 26 May 07 08:22 AM

I'd be happy if someone answer my question concerning these sentence: (I saw them in a grammar book.)

A: By the end of next month, he will have been teaching at this school.

B: I had been waiting an hour before an old man spoke to me.

I wonder if in A, "By" goes with "will have been teaching". "By" demands Perfection, while "will have been teaching" expresses Duration. It's puzzling to me. Could somebody help me?

Similarly puzzling to me is －－－in B, "before" demands Perfection, while "had been waiting" expresses Duration. I think "when" would be better used than "before".
Why does "before" go with "had been waiting"?

Anonymous

Grammar

Cool Breeze

#370735 Sat, 26 May 07 11:19 AM

I would say:
By the end of next month, he will teach / be teaching at this school.

Or:
By the end of next month, he will have been teaching two years at this school.

The perfect future tense is usually used to indicate action that will be completed by a certain point in time and therefore I see nothing wrong with by.

If you expected someone to speak to you, there is nothing wrong with sentence B.

CB

Cool Breeze

Joined on Fri, Apr 7 2006

Helsinki, Finland

Senior Member (2,666)

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.- Mark Twain

Tenses

Marius Hancu

#370738 Sat, 26 May 07 11:38 AM

Cool Breeze is right.

And by the way, B has perfection, had been waiting is past perfect progressive.
Without perfection would be the simple past progressive of was waiting.

Marius Hancu

Joined on Wed, Apr 26 2006

Montreal, Canada

Veteran Member (11,673)

RSS Feed: ESL General English Grammar Questions