TAY NGUYEN UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES STUDIES

GRADUATION ASSIGNMENT
TITLE:
AN INVESTIGATION INTO ABILITY TO DISTINGUISH
“WILL” AND “BE GOING TO” OF THE FIRST- YEAR
ENGLISH MAJORED STUDENTS AT
TAY NGUYEN UNIVERSITY
Student : Nguyễn Thị Thúy Nga
Class : English Course 2010
Supervisor :Tống Thị Lan Chi
ĐắkLắk, April,2014
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my
supervisor, Mrs. Tong Thi Lan Chi, M.A, a lecturer of faculty of foreign languages
studies at Tay Nguyen University for her valuable advice. Her guidance helps me in all
the time of research and writing of this study.
Secondly, I would like to give my sincere thanks for the teachers of the faculty of
foreign languages studies, Tay Nguyen University for their useful lectures and
suggestions and my classmates for their support for my graduation assignment.
Thirdly, I would like also to express my special thanks to the first year English
major students at Tay Nguyen University for their enthusiastic cooperation in my
survey. Without their help, this study would have been impossible.
Last but not the least, I would like to thank my family and my friends: my
parents, for giving birth to me at the first place and supporting me spiritually
throughout my life. In addition, my friends are always beside me to give supports and
encouragement to me. They helped me in the successful completion of my study.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i
TABLE OF CONTENTS ii

CHAPTER 3: CONTENTS AND METHODOLOGY 10
3.1. Contents of study 10
3.2. Methodology of the study 10
3.3. Subjects of the study 11
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 12
4.1. The differences between “Will” and “Be going to” in expressing prediction
and intention 12
4.1.1. The students’ ability to use “Will” 12
4.1.2. The students’ ability to use “Be going to” 14
4.2. The similarities between “Will” and “Be going to” in expressing prediction
and intention 16
4.3. Discussion 17
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 18
5.1. Conclusion 18
5.2. Recommendations 18
REFERENCES 20
APPENDICES 21
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Students’ responses in the multiple-choice exercise 12
Table 2: Students’ responses in the sentence completing exercise 13
Table 3: Students’ responses in the multiple-choice exercise 14
Table 4: Students’ responses in the sentence completing exercise 15
Table 5: Students’ responses in the multiple-choice exercise 16
Table 6: Students’ responses from the two exercises 17
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1 State of the problem
English is an international language and furthermore it is a compulsory subject
in Vietnam.
Learning a foreign language like English, learners have to learn a variety of
linguistic points such as vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation etc. Among these

The thesis, as a whole, is considered to be significant on the two aspects. First of
all, theoretically, it provides learners of English, not excluding the researcher, with the
useful knowledge relating to “Will” and “Be going to” which will help them avoid
confusion when applying them for expressing intention and prediction. Second,
practically, the findings reported by the study offers students the clear picture of how
they identified the differences between “Will” and “Be going to” in terms of usage.
4 Scope of the study
It is essential for the study to be carried out with the involvement of all the English
major students at Tay Nguyen University, including the second year and last year
students. Doing so will help ensure the accurate and convincing result of the study as
well as the success of the researcher in his study. However, in this study, the focus is
put on the first year English major students’ ability to distinguish “Will” and “Be
going to” because of the limitation of time as well as of the researcher’s ability.
5 Outline of the study
The assignment is divided into 4 chapters:
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION. This chapter provides the background information
for the whole assignment: state of the problem, objective the study, signification and
scope of the study.
Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. In this chapter, the literature related to
“Will” and “Be going to” will be presented. The first section is about the form of
“Will” and “Be going to” for expressing future actions. The second section explains the
usage of “Will” and “Be going to” for expressing future actions. The third and fourth
section are to respectively present the similarities and differences between “Will” and
“Be going to” in expressing prediction and intention.
Chapter 3: CONTENTS AND METHODOLOGY. This chapter describes the
method used to carry out this study. It is composed four main parts: Contents of the
study, methodology of the study, subjects of the study and procedures.
Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. This chapter reports and discusses
the result from this study.
Chapter 5: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS. This chapter presents

We
You
They
stay?
- Negative
I
He
She
It
We
You
They
Will not
( Won’t)
stay.
2.1.2 Form of “Be going to” for expressing future actions
- Positive
I Am(‘m)
going to pay.
He
She
It
Is
(‘s)
We
You
They
Are
(‘re)
- Question

B: Oh, isn’t there? I’ll get some in town. I’m going there later on.
(Elsworth, 2000:56)
• According to Cullen (2007), “will” can be used to make a prediction about the
future based on opinion.
- Example: One day people will travel to Mars.
(Cullen, 2007:39)
2.2.2. The usages of “Be going to” for expressing future actions.
According to Eastwood (1992), the usage of “Be going to” for expressing future
actions is presented as follows:
• We can use “Be going to” express an intention. The speaker had the intention
before the time of speaking:
- Example: Emma is going to do an experiment this afternoon.
(Eastwood ,1992:60)
• We can use “Be going to” for a prediction based on the present situation, when
we can see that something is going to happen.
- Example: The ladder is moving, so David is going to fall.
(Eastwood,1992:60)
2.3. The similarities between “Will” and “Be going to” in expressing prediction
and intention.
According to A.J.Thomson and A.V.Martinet (1960), the similarities between
“Will” and “Be going to” in expressing prediction and intention are stated as follows:
2.3.1 The similarities between “Will” and “Be going to” in expressing
intention.
When the intention is neither clearly premeditated nor clearly unpremeditated,
either “be going to” or “will”may be used:
- Example: I will/ am going to climb that mountain one day.
(A.J.Thomson and A.V.Martinet ,1960:205)
2.3.2 The similarities between “Will” and “Be going to” in expressing
prediction.
“Will” and “Be going to” are rather similar to express what the speaker thinks,

up, Trevor.
- I know. I’m going to do it
tomorrow.
Trevor has already decided.
(Elsworth ,2000,58)

2.4.2 The differences between “Will” and “Be going to” in expressing
prediction
As stated in Elsworth (2000), the differences between “Will” and “Be going to”
in expressing prediction are stated as follows.
WILL

BE GOING TO

We can use will for a prediction to base
on our opinions or our past experiences.
- Example:
 I think United will win the game.
 I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself
there.
(Elsworth, 2000,62)
We use be going to for a prediction to
base on some present evidence.
- Example:
 There isn’t a cloud in the sky.
It’s going to be a lovely day.
 This bag isn’t very strong.
It’s going to break.
(Elsworth, 2000,62)


asked to fill out a questionnaire.
3.3 Subjects of the study
Aiming at looking into English student’s ability to distinguish “Will” and “Be
going to”, the survey is conducted with a group of 60 first -year English students of
the Foreign Language Studies Faculty, Tay Nguyen University.
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
Chapter III has introduced the research questions as well as described the
subjects, the data collection instrument and the procedures of the study. In this
Chapter, the results from the two exercises were reported and discussed.
4.1 The students’ ability to recognize the differences between “Will” and “Be
going to” in expressing prediction and intention.
4.1.1 The students’ ability to use “Will”
As presented in Sub-section 2.2, “will” can be used to express an intention and
prediction. The students’ perception of this difference has been tested through two
groups of questions: Group 1 of Questionnaire 1 (the multiple-choice exercise) and
Group 1 of Questionnaire 2 (the sentence completing exercise). The result of this test
is displayed in the following two tables:
Questions Correct answers
Students’ correct responses
Number Percentage
Question 2 B 26/60 43%
Question 9 B 30/60 50%
Question 11 B 10/60 17%
Question 13 A 19/60 32%
Question 15 A 40/60 67%
Question 17 A 20/60 33%
Average percentage of students’ correct answers 40%
Table 1: Students’ responses in the multiple-choice exercise
Questions
Students’ correct responses

the five questions mentioned in Table 2 was the same, so it can be inferred from the
two comparisons that the respondents were not sure about their answers to those
questions. The average percentage of the students’ correct answers in Table 2 was
nearly 10%, lower than that in Table 1(40%). Based on this comparison, it can be
inferred that when using “Will” for expressing future actions, the students were not as
good at the sentence completing exercise as at the multiple-choice exercise.
In summary, most of the students (60% in Table 1 and 68% in Table 2) did not
have correct understanding of the differences between “Will” and “Be going to” in
expressing prediction and intention.
4.1.2 The students’ ability to use “Be going to”
As presented in Sub-section 2.2, “Be going to” can be used to express an
intention and prediction. The students’ perception of this difference has been tested
through two groups of questions: Group 1 of Questionnaire 1 (the multiple-choice
exercise) and Group 1 of Questionnaire 2 (the sentence completing exercise). The
result of this test is displayed in the following tables:
Questions Correct answers
Students’ correct responses
Number Percentage
Question 1 A 10/60 17%
Question 4 A 30/60 50%
Question 7 A 20/60 33%
Question 8 A 19/60 32%
Question 12 A 26/60 43%
Question 14 A 20/60 33%
Question 16 A 45/60 75%
Average percentage of students’ correct answers 40%
Table 3: Students’ responses in the multiple-choice exercise
Questions
Students’ correct responses
Number Percentage

percentage of the students’ correct answers to the seven questions in Table 3 was
higher. However, these figures were lower than 50%, which meant most of the
respondents could not recognize the differences between “Will” and “Be going to” in
expressing prediction and intention.
4.2 The students’ ability to identify the similarities between “Will” and “Be going
to” in expressing prediction and intention.
Questions Correct answers Students’ correct responses
Number Percentage
Question 3 C 10/60 17%
Question 5 C 16/60 27%
Question 6 C 20/60 33%
Average percentage of students’ correct answers 27%
Table 5: Students’ responses in the multiple-choice exercise
As seen in Table 5 above, the majority of the students (73%) did not recognize
the similarities between “Will” and “Be going to” in expressing prediction and
intention. Especially, only 10 out of 60 students (17%) could choose the correct
answer to Question 3. Besides, only 16 out of 60 students (27%) could choose the
correct answer to Question 5 and 20 out of 60 students (33%) could choose the correct
answer to Question 6. The students did not recognize that in Question 3, when the
intention was neither clearly premeditated nor clearly unpremeditated, either “be going
to” or “will” could be used. In addition, they did not understand that “Will” and “Be
going to” in Question 5 were rather similar to express what the speaker thought and
therefore, either form could be used.
4.3. Discussion
Using “will” and “be going to”
Average percentage of students’
answers
Correct answers Wrong answers
The differences
between “Will”

5.1 Conclusion
The study is aimed at identifying the students’ ability to distinguish between
“Will” and “Be going to”.
The exercises are used as the data collection instrument to assure some specific
understanding as well as some incomplete understanding of using “Will” and “Be
going to” of 60 students of the English Class, course 2013.
The findings of the study help to make two practical recommendations for the
students. The first one emphasizes the needs of consulting grammar books for those
grammar points which is confusing and of practicing grammar exercises. The second
one gives a further recommendation on applying grammar points in frequent
conversations or writing as much as possible.
In conclusion, hopefully the study will be useful not only to the first year English
major students but also to other students of English and learners of English as a second
language.
However, the study cannot avoid having some limitations. The results from the
students’ exercises cannot, to some extent, give a full conclusion on such common
errors. For the multiple-choice exercise, the respondents may have chosen the answers
randomly and intuitively, which may result in a limitation of accuracy.
5.2 Recommendations
The two findings presented in Section 4.3 indicate that most of the respondents
did not recognize the differences between “Will” and “Be going to” used for
expressing prediction and intention. Based on these findings, it is recommended that
the students should discover their problems with such studied grammar points as well
as other confusing grammar points. This work must be done by the students
themselves, not by others as Blaise Passcal said: "People are generally better
persuaded by the reasons which they themselves discovered than by those which have
come into the minds of others" (in Scott Thornbury, 1999: 51).
Firstly, when realizing their problems with grammar as in the case with the usage
of “Will” and “Be going to”, the students ought to read more grammar books which
cover those grammar points such as Grammar Practice for Upper-Intermediate

I am Nguyễn Thị Thúy Nga who has been taking 2010 English Language Course
offered by Faculty of Foreign Language Studies at Tay Nguyen University. This
questionnaire is prepared as part of my graduation assignment with the title “An
investigation into to the ability of the fist- year English majored student at Tay Nguyen
University to distinguish “will” and “be going to” in terms of usage”. Your completion
of this questionnaire is highly appreciated. All the data collected will be used for the
research purpose only, and your confidentiality will be secured. For each response,
please read the questions carefully and circle your answers. . Your answer would be
very helpful to the graduation paper. Thank you for your cooperation.
I. Choose the correct answer
1. I have bought some bricks and ______ build a garage.
A. am going to
B. will
C. A & B are correct
2. 'There's someone at the door.' 'OK, I ______ answer it.'
A. am going to
B. will
C. A & B are correct
3. I ______climb that mountain one day.
A. am going to
B. will
C. A & B are correct
4. Look at those clouds! It______rain.
A. is going to
B. will
C. A & B are correct
5. It ______take a long time to photocopy all the documents.
A. am going to
B. will
C. A & B are correct