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I have the following exercise on translating sentences. I've written the next sentences:

  1. By the time they finish talking, the lesson will have been over, Nick will have had a shower and will have been ready to go back home with his mother.
  2. Nick will have done his homework in two hours and will be quite free.
  3. When I arrive to them Nick with his parents will be having dinner.
  4. We'll be playing computer games after dinner.
  5. Mrs. Collins will have made coffee by the time we finish (have finished) playing.
  6. We will be sitting in the hall and drinking hot coffee. Then I'll go back home.

The keys for the 1st, 5th and 6th are:

  • will have finished their talk, will have been over, will have had a shower, will have been ready;
  • will have made, have stopped;
  • will be sit and drink.

I'm stuck with some questions:

  1. for the first sentence it isn't acceptable to use future perfect (will have finished their talk) - it's a time conjunction as far as I know, don't I? And could I say "will have taken a shower" instead of "will have had a shower"?
  2. Could I say "will have prepared coffee" and does "stop / have stopped" sounds awkward?
  3. Why Future Simple for the last questin in the list?
  4. Does the 3rd sentence have a correct structure (or "will be having dinner with his parents")?

I've written all of them in one topic because each is connected with one another and can't be get from the context.

P.S.: I'm not a native but really want to know my mistakes if there are any.

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    I've voted to close your question as being too broad. Generally, a post on ELL should consist of a single question, or one main question with very closely related questions on aspects related to the main question. You should split this post into multiple posts.
    – LMS
    Mar 8, 2017 at 12:20
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    We tend to use the future perfect to refer to an event-in-time, not to a persistent state. over and ready are states which persist, and we would use the simple future with them, "will be over" and "will be ready", but "Nick will have had his shower", since "to have a shower" is an event-in-time. We could also say "will be showered" since "showered" is the state one is in after taking a shower. The future perfect establishes the temporal sequential relationship of two things in the future. Two persistent states would be coeval, not sequential.
    – TimR
    Mar 8, 2017 at 12:36
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    To keep the question open, I suggest you edit it to focus only on the future perfect vs future simple, and put the future continuous questions in another question. I've changed the title to reflect the gist of a question that could remain open.
    – TimR
    Mar 8, 2017 at 12:44

1 Answer 1

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  1. By the time they finish talking, the lesson will have been over, Nick will have had a shower and will have been ready to go back home with his mother.

    By the time they finish talking the lesson will be over, Nick will have had a shower and be ready to go back home with his mother.

    By the time they've finished talking the lesson will be over, Nick will have had a shower and be ready to go back home with his mother.

You would only use the future perfect for the second clause and fourth clause if they are complemented with time periods.

...the lesson will have been over for some time ... will have been ready for a while to go back home with his mother.

  1. Correct

  2. When I arrive to them Nick with his parents will be having dinner.

    When I arrive Nick will be having dinner with his parents.

    When I arrive at their house Nick will be having dinner with his parents. By the time I arrive ...

The verb arrive takes at not to.

  1. Correct

  2. Mrs. Collins will have made coffee by the time we finish (have finished) playing.

    Mrs Collins will have made coffee by the time we finish playing.

    Mrs Collins will have made coffee by the time we've finished playing. Both are correct.

  3. We will be sitting in the hall and drinking hot coffee. Then I'll go back home.

    We'll sit in the hall and drink hot coffee, then I'll go home.

    We'll be sitting in the hall and drinking hot coffee when she arrives, then I'll go home.

    You'll be sitting in the hall and drinking hot coffee as I go home.

The continuous tense needs a clause to contemporaneous clause to complement it.

In all cases within a clause with two or more verbs you don't need to repeat will if it applies to all of them.

Sorry, the formatting didn't seem to work!

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