Will or Be Going To? Uncovering Formulaic Patterns of Future Marking in L2 Academic English

This study examines how learners from different first language backgrounds express future time in academic English writing, focusing on will and be going to constructions. Drawing on a corpus of academic texts from 25 language backgrounds, the research investigates patterns of future time expressions across linguistic groups. The findings reveal a strong preference for will (96.2%) over be going to (3.8%) across all groups. While will appears uniformly throughout texts, be going to is used more selectively, indicating distinct functional roles. The study also documents variations in the density of future expressions per text, ranging from 2.30 to 4.85, and systematic differences in how future markers combine with different parts of speech. These results suggest that will has developed into a formulaic element in academic writing and contribute to the understanding of formulaic language in second language acquisition.