future tenses

[magdalena]

I have been revising future tenses and tenses with future meaning and I came across some online grammar exercises which are said to have false/true type answer but I am not sure whether both proposed answers are not correct. Here they are:

Sarah is going to come to the party. Olivier is going to be there as well.

Can not I say "Oliver will be there as well?" am I mistaken or would it suggest that Oliver presence may have something to do with Sarah being there? :)

I think he is going to be the next President.
Can not I say "I think he will be the next President?" (provided that I know what type of person is likely to gain enough support in given circumstances ).

Ah! It is so great that you are coming! Children will be very happy!/ children are going to be very happy! Is there any diffrence in meaning?


Thank You for your help!

[Tdol]

There's a lot of overlap between the two forms. In your first example, you could use 'will', but as you've started with 'going to', it seems more balanced of you have the two the same. If, say, you suddenly remembered about Oliver, then 'will' would make sense. Otherwise, why are you changing the form?
You could use either form with the president example. 'The children will be happy' makes more sense to me, but you could use 'going to'. However, as you're responding to some new information, 'will' works better for me.