Learn English – I will go vs. I am going

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I used to think Will was used for future and Present Progressive for ongoing actions but recently I came across a site(forgot to save the link) which states that present progressive can be used for describing action taking place in upcoming time.

For example- I will go to market to buy groceries tomorrow.

I am going to market to buy groceries tomorrow.

My questions is:
Is there any difference in meaning among these two?

and if there is then what is it?

Best Answer

I will go and I'm going are different as you have mentioned.

And in your example you have used tomorrow which points future, so you are describing an action in present tense( present continuous) on a future time - so the meaning is the same.

But you should not use continuous tense form for an action/situation unless there is one more action/situation that occurs during that time.

When I am going to market to buy groceries tomorrow, I will stop by your place.

Here you put that continuous action in the background and talk about other event "stop by your place". Here it makes sense to use Continuous - not with just one action/situation.

We Asians, use continuous tense unnecessarily and someone corrected me a while back on this.

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