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What is future perfect tense?

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What is future perfect tense?

Future perfect tense verbs are verb tenses that use the helping verbs will have and shall have and the past participle of the verb.

They show actions that will occur before another action in the future.

By Friday, our team will have won the homecoming game.

By next year, I shall have graduated from high school.

The Perfect Tenses: A Brief Overview

Remember that tense is an attribute of a verb that shows the time that the verb occurred.

Every verb has three simple tenses.

1. Present Tense

2. Past Tense

3. Future Tense

Every verb also has three perfect tenses.

Perfect tense verbs are formed with the helping verbs have, has, had, will and shall.

All perfect tenses use these helping verbs and the past participle of the verb. We'll get into what past participle means in just a minute.

1. Present Perfect Tense Verbs are formed with the helping verbs has and have.

2. Past Perfect Tense Verbs are formed with the helping verb had.

3. Future Perfect Tense Verbs are formed with the helping verbs will have and shall have.

Past Participles

Okay, you've read that these verbs are formed from the helping verbs will have and shall have and the past participle of the verb.

So, what do I mean by past participle?

Well, every verb has what are called four principal parts.

This means that we can take any verb and break it into these parts. Past participles are simply one of those principal parts of a verb.

Here is a chart showing you some examples of verbs broken into their principal parts.

Present	Present Participle	Past	Past Participle
learn	(is) learning	learned	(have) learned
won	(is) winning	won	(have) won
graduate	(is) graduating	graduated	(have) graduated

If you'd like to learn more about past participles, click here.

Future Perfect Tense

Now that you know about past participles and perfect tenses, let's focus on these guys a little bit more.

Remember that they are formed with the helping verbs will have and shall have and the past participle of the verb, and they are used to show an action that will occur before another action in the future.

will have or shall have	+ Past Participle	Future Perfect
will have	+ learned	will have learned
will have	+ won	will have won
shall have	+ graduated	shall have graduated

There you have it! Now you know how to form this verb tense.

Elizabeth O'Brien from Grammar Revolution

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