Is use of present simple correct in these examples?
My daughter goes to school tomorrow [for the first time].
I go to school to talk to my daughter's teacher tomorrow [and this happens regularly].
As far as I know from books, present simple is used for actions that happen regularly, and for scheduled events, but what about the situations above? Suppose the second action may take place regularly, but not the first one. What tense would a native speaker use for an action that happens for the first time?
Best Answer
In the absence of a future tense, English has several ways of expressing the future. One is the present tense, as in ‘My daughter goes to school tomorrow for the first time’. In practice, a native speaker would probably something like ‘It’s my daughter’s first day at school tomorrow’, where the present tense also expresses the future.
Your second example is unlikely to occur in exactly that form. If it’s something you’d already planned to do, you’d say ‘I’m going to school to talk to my daughter's teacher’, because ‘going to’ + verb is how we express the future in such cases. If you’re reporting something that you regularly do, then you would use the present tense, but normally you’d add something about the frequency with which you do it, for example, ‘I go to school to talk to my daughter's teacher once a term’.