| Acknowledgements | 第1-7页 |
| Abstract | 第7-9页 |
| 摘要 | 第9-15页 |
| Chapter 1 Introduction | 第15-19页 |
| ·General description of the research | 第15-16页 |
| ·The rationale and objectives of the present research | 第16-17页 |
| ·Research questions | 第17页 |
| ·Outline of the thesis | 第17-19页 |
| Chapter 2 Literature Review | 第19-37页 |
| ·The corpus-based study | 第19-25页 |
| ·The corpus | 第19-21页 |
| ·Learner corpora | 第21-25页 |
| ·Ways to express future time reference | 第25-37页 |
| ·Future, modality and tense | 第25-26页 |
| ·Ways to express future time reference | 第26-35页 |
| ·Summary of the ways to express future time reference | 第35-37页 |
| Chapter 3 Methodology and Data Collection | 第37-59页 |
| ·The corpora and concordancer used in this study | 第37-42页 |
| ·Corpus CLEC | 第38-39页 |
| ·Corpus BROWN | 第39-40页 |
| ·The concordancer AntConc | 第40页 |
| ·The method of data collection from the two corpora | 第40-42页 |
| ·The experiment | 第42-44页 |
| ·Data collection | 第44-59页 |
| ·Data from CLEC and BROWN | 第44-54页 |
| ·Data from the experiment | 第54-59页 |
| Chapter 4 Results and Discussion | 第59-73页 |
| ·Characteristics of different ways in CLEC and BROWN | 第59-67页 |
| ·Discussion of will + infinitive | 第60-62页 |
| ·Discussion of shall + infinitive | 第62页 |
| ·Discussion of be going to + infinitive | 第62-63页 |
| ·Discussion of be about to + infinitive | 第63-64页 |
| ·Discussion of be to + infinitive | 第64页 |
| ·Discussion of will have + past participle | 第64-65页 |
| ·Discussion of will + progressive | 第65-66页 |
| ·Summary of the discussion on the data from CLEC and BROWN | 第66-67页 |
| ·The discussion of the data from the experiment | 第67-73页 |
| ·Discussion of the data from the translation task | 第67-70页 |
| ·Discussion of the data from the composition task | 第70页 |
| ·Summary of the experiment | 第70-73页 |
| Chapter 5 Conclusions, Implications and Suggestions | 第73-77页 |
| ·Conclusions drawn from the present study | 第73-74页 |
| ·Pedagogical implications | 第74-75页 |
| ·Limitations of the present study and suggestions for further research | 第75-77页 |
| Bibliography | 第77-81页 |
| Appendix A Some concordances from the corpora | 第81-99页 |
| Appendix B The experiment | 第99-120页 |
