Answers

May 19, 2017 - 09:48 AM
Hello rewallis,
You're right that Will=Werden and that's how you build the future tense in German.
Yet at Fluenz we made the choice not to teach "werden" in the basic course, because as we explain in German 3 session 8, many times when in English we use "will", in German we just use a simple present, especially in spoken German. The modal verb "werden" is not always necessary, especially when there's something else in the phrase indicating you're referring to the future
That's why we decided to keep the "werden" forms for future levels, and that's why in the workouts we've shown examples of phrases where a German simple present corresponds to a phrase with "will" in English, like in this example.
Of course, "Die Kinder brauchen neue Hosen" can also mean: "The children need new pairs of pants.",
but here we're building the final phrase: "Die Kinder brauchen wirklich bald neue Hosen/The children will need new pairs of pants really soon" -hence the future.
You're right that Will=Werden and that's how you build the future tense in German.
Yet at Fluenz we made the choice not to teach "werden" in the basic course, because as we explain in German 3 session 8, many times when in English we use "will", in German we just use a simple present, especially in spoken German. The modal verb "werden" is not always necessary, especially when there's something else in the phrase indicating you're referring to the future
That's why we decided to keep the "werden" forms for future levels, and that's why in the workouts we've shown examples of phrases where a German simple present corresponds to a phrase with "will" in English, like in this example.
Of course, "Die Kinder brauchen neue Hosen" can also mean: "The children need new pairs of pants.",
but here we're building the final phrase: "Die Kinder brauchen wirklich bald neue Hosen/The children will need new pairs of pants really soon" -hence the future.