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The book I use to learn English has this example sentence,

To tell the truth, I do not want to go to the party tomorrow because the examinations begin the day after tomorrow.

I think this should be 'because the examinations will begin ~'

Which is correct?

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  • Why do you think that?
    – Kaique
    Commented Mar 15, 2019 at 18:22
  • Because I learnt that we use will when describing future events. In this case aren't the examinations future events?
    – look ahead
    Commented Mar 15, 2019 at 18:54

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It can get both tenses and be grammatically correct. But the specific use of the present tense is to indicate more than an event that may happen in the near future; it is to state that the date of that examination is already arranged and done with. There is no possibility of it being changed or altered (Kind of treated as a fact).

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This is what is technically known as the futurate, the use of the grammatical present tense to describe events in the future. You will also see:

I'm going to school tomorrow
The holidays start next week

And so on. It's completely normal, though I can see it would be baffling the first time people came across it, if their native language either doesn't do that, or doesn't have the same sort of system of tenses at all.

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