Present tenses:
Which of these situations go best with present simple & which go best with present continuous?
| PERMANENT | TEMPORARY | HABIT | JUST NOW |
| SELDOM | OCCASIONALLY | THESE DAYS, BUT NOT FOR LONG | CLASS TIMES |
| SOMETHING YOU DO ONCE A YEAR | NEVER | AT THE MOMENT | THE WEATHER TODAY |
- ‘How do you prefer to study?’ ‘I _________ about the topic and ______ notes.
- ‘What languages ______________?’ ‘Chinese, Slovak and Spanish.’
- ‘Who _____________ that violin?’ (violin = musical instrument) ‘My wife.’
- ‘Your daughter’s very keen on keep fit, isn’t she?’ ‘Yes, _______ yoga and __________ spinning classes at the leisure centre.’ (spinning class = an exercise class)
- ‘Where is she now?’ ‘She _____________ weights in her bedroom.’ (weights = dumbbells – exercise equipment)
- ‘Who is ______________ the saxophone in the flat upstairs? Do they ___________ every night? How do you _________?’ (saxophone = a musical instrument)
- ‘What’s that song ___________ upstairs?’ ‘I can’t hear it. Oh, yes, she _______________ to One Direction again. She ____________________ them every day. I really ____________ them!’
- ‘I know you like _____________ Arabic, but can we __________ in English in class, please?’
- ‘Do you usually wear that hat?’ ‘No, it’s new, normally I _____________ a baseball cap like Ahmed’s. He usually ______________ that red MAGA red one, but today he _______________ a blue NIKE one.
- ‘What a lovely watch!’ ‘It ________________________ I’m afraid – it’s been broken for years.’
- ‘Could I use your phone?’ ‘I’m afraid it _________________________ at the moment.’
Repeated actions not around the moment of speaking: present simple.
Repeated actions around the moment of speaking: present continuous.
We use the present simple for events – things that happen one after another.
We use present continuous for background – things that are already happening when the story starts, or that continue through part of the story.
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Write a 3 sentence story using both tenses & read it to your partner.
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Instructions & directions – what tense do we use to write and give instructions?
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We use present continuous for changing and developing situations
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Write 3 sentences to illustrate this use of the present continuous.
| The world’s population | You | Your English | Prices |
| Pandas | The company Nokia | Teenagers | The political situation in the UK |
| cities | Us | books | athletes |
| Elderly people | The USA | traffic | Autumn |
3rd person singular.
- What is the most common way of making the 3rd person singular?
- What happens with words ending in vowel + y?
- What happens with words ending in consonant + y?
- After which consonants and groups of consonants do we add -es?
- Which two other common words add – es?
Write the third person singular of these verbs?
| Box | Brush | Buy | Complete |
| Cry | Defend | Deny | Destroy |
| Excite | Expect | Fry | Guess |
| Look | Pray | Reach | Receive |
| Rush | Spend | Want | watch |
Verbs we don’t use with present continuous
Try to make sentences using these words in the present tense:
| Believe | Belong | Contain | Forget |
| Hate | Like | Love | Matter |
| Need | Own | Prefer | Realise |
| Remember | Suppose | Understand | Want |
‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘taste’, ‘smell’, ‘feel’ are verbs that describe senses. These verbs aren’t usually used in continuous forms. They are often used with ‘can’.
What is a stative verb in English grammar?
An example of a continuous tense is the present continuous or past continuous. These verbs are called stative, or state verbs. A verb which isn’t stative is called a dynamic verb, and is usually an action. Often stative verbs are about liking or disliking something, or about a mental state, not about an action.
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