Hi, folks!

First of all, I'd like to congratulate you on the excellent website. It's been a very useful and reliable source of information since I've started teaching English a few months ago.

I´ve recently come across an explanation that sounded odd to me. The explanation was on the use of "going to" for future, and I found it in a English course book for Brazilian students:

" The Immediate Future:

Use the Immediate Future to predict something immediate or something happening in a short time. The prediction is based on what we know, see, or feel while we talk about.

Rule: verb to be + going to + verb"

Some of the given examples were:

"My friends are going to trael in a few days.", My mother is going to prepare me a delicious cake.", and "Technology is going to change everyday life pretty soon."

Having read that and having not found anything similar in English grammar books, I felt extremely confused and decided to google "immediate future". Coincidently or not, all the grammar-related results that came up were from Brazilian websites.

My question: is there such a thing as "the immediate future"  as the course book states? Or is this a "Frankenstein" created and perpetuated by some Brazilian teachers of English?

Regards,

William