Future Perfect Continuous ESL Games, Activities & Worksheets
Future Perfect Continuous Board Game
ESL Future Perfect Continuous Board Game - Grammar and Speaking: Forming Questions, True or False, Guessing, Freer Practice - Group Work
In this fun future perfect continuous board game, students use the future perfect continuous tense to describe what they will have been doing by specific...
Future Perfect Continuous Review
ESL Future Perfect Continuous Worksheet - Grammar Exercises: Matching, Gap-fill, Sentence Completion, Writing Sentences - Speaking Activity: Freer Practice - Pair Work
In this useful future perfect continuous worksheet, students review the future perfect continuous for duration up to a future point and for expressing causes of...
Mime It
ESL Future Perfect Continuous Game - Grammar and Speaking: Miming, Guessing, Forming Sentences, Freer Practice - Pair Work
In this free future perfect continuous game, students say prompt words and mime an action so their partner can guess and produce a sentence in the future...
The Will-Have-Been Challenge
ESL Future Perfect Continuous Activity - Grammar and Listening: Matching, Changing Word Forms, Gap-fill - Pair Work
In this productive future perfect continuous activity, students listen to sentence halves, match them, and complete them with verbs in the future perfect continuous. In pairs, Student A reads out a...
Understanding the Future Perfect Continuous
The future perfect continuous uses 'will have been' plus the -ing form of the verb to describe an action that will still be in progress at a specific point in the future, as in 'By Friday, I will have been working here for ten years.' When students swap it for the future perfect and say 'I will have worked here for ten years,' they lose the sense of ongoing duration and imply the action will be finished rather than still running, which changes the meaning of the sentence entirely.
This page covers the future perfect continuous at B2 level with four activities including a board game, a worksheet, a miming game, and a listening and matching activity, totaling 95 minutes of classroom practice, with one activity available as a free download.
This table shows the main forms of the future perfect continuous, from affirmative statements to short answers.
| Form | Structure | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Affirmative | subject + will have been + verb-ing | 'She will have been working for six hours by 9 p.m.' |
| Negative | subject + won't have been + verb-ing | 'He won't have been waiting long by the time you arrive.' |
| Yes/No question | Will + subject + have been + verb-ing? | 'Will you have been studying long by the time the exam starts?' |
| Wh- question | Wh- word + will + subject + have been + verb-ing? | 'How long will she have been running by the time she crosses the finish line?' |
| Short answer | Yes, subject + will have. / No, subject + won't have. | Q: 'Will they have been traveling long?' A: 'Yes, they will have.' / 'No, they won't have.' |
When to Use the Future Perfect Continuous
Setting the Scene in Future Storytelling: When a writer wants to anchor a future moment in a narrative and show that an action will already be underway when something else happens, the future perfect continuous creates that sense of an ongoing backdrop, as in 'By the time the explorers reach base camp, they will have been hiking through the mountains for nine days.'
Acknowledging Sustained Effort at a Milestone: Speakers reach for the future perfect continuous when they want to recognize how long someone will have been doing something by the time a significant moment arrives, making the recognition feel weighty and specific, as in 'When you receive this award next year, you will have been serving this community for two decades.'
Making a Tactful Inference About Someone's Likely Activity: When a speaker wants to politely guess what someone else will have been doing at a future moment without stating it as a certainty, the future perfect continuous softens the assumption into a natural observation, as in 'By the time she calls back, she will probably have been sitting in that meeting for hours.'
2-Step Framework for Teaching the Future Perfect Continuous
1. Build the Form with Timed Pressure: Start by getting students to produce full future perfect continuous sentences in a controlled but game-like setting. A board game format works well here: students roll the dice, land on a time expression square, and pick a card telling them to give either true or false information about themselves. The challenge of forming a sentence like 'I will have been studying for two hours by dinner time' on the spot while classmates guess whether it is true or false keeps accuracy practice surprisingly engaging.
2. Sharpen Listening and Form Recognition Together: Once students can build sentences, push them to work with the tense under mild listening pressure. In a pair matching activity, one student reads a sentence half aloud while their partner scans a worksheet to find the matching half, then completes it with a verb from a box in the future perfect continuous and reads it back. This combines listening accuracy with form production and gives students immediate peer feedback on whether their answer makes sense.
Common Mistakes with the Future Perfect Continuous
Dropping 'Have' from the Auxiliary Chain: Students often omit the auxiliary 'have' and write 'will been' instead of the full three-part structure 'will have been,' collapsing the tense into an ungrammatical form. Wrong: 'By next summer, they will been living here for three years.' Correct: 'By next summer, they will have been living here for three years.'
Using the Base Verb Instead of the -ing Form: Students often write the base form of the main verb after 'will have been' instead of adding -ing, treating 'been' as if it were the main verb and leaving the structure incomplete. Wrong: 'She will have been work at the company for ten years by December.' Correct: 'She will have been working at the company for ten years by December.'
Common Questions About Teaching the Future Perfect Continuous
What is a good worksheet for teaching the future perfect continuous?
Future perfect continuous worksheets at B2 need to cover both key uses of the tense, and the Future Perfect Continuous Review does exactly that. It addresses describing duration up to a future point and expressing causes of future states through matching, gap-fill, and sentence completion exercises, then ends with conversation questions students discuss with a partner.
What is a fun speaking game for practicing the future perfect continuous?
Mime It is a free future perfect continuous speaking game at B2 level that works by replacing written prompts with physical action. One student says prompt words and mimes an action while their partner tries to produce the matching future perfect continuous sentence. Every correct guess earns a tick, and the student with the most ticks wins.
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