How to use Present Simple and Present Continuous correctly - Deep Dive
2025-02-09 15 min
Description & Show Notes
Struggling with when to use present simple vs. present continuous? In this episode, we break down the key differences, common mistakes, and even share funny personal confessions to help you remember! Tune in for expert tips and a grammar “Golden Nugget” often forgotten about!
- Introduction (0:00 - 0:21)
- Introduction to Present Simple vs. Present Continuous (0:24 - 3:09)
- Permanent vs. temporary actions (3:09 - 5:20)
- German learners' overuse of the continuous form (5:21 - 7:01)
- Present Continuous for future arrangements (7:01 - 8:38)
- Stative verbs* and exceptions (8:39 - 10:15)
- Golden Nugget. Expressing annoyance with Present Continuous (10:16 - 12:42)
- Closing and teaser for next episode (12:56 - 14:36)
*Download the PDF list of Stative verbs for free @ https://padlet.com/davepreston/the-padlet-6tkq176t30g48f7a
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Rebecca: https://rebeccadeacon.com
Birgit: https://birgitkasimirski.de/
Dave: What about improving your communication skills in 2025? Check out my Short & Sweet 4-hr webinars: @ https://businessenglishacademy.de/company-short-sweet-soft-skill-webinars/
Kämpfen Sie mit der Frage, wann Sie das Present Simple und wann das Present Continuous verwenden sollen? In dieser Folge erläutern wir die wichtigsten Unterschiede, häufige Fehler und teilen sogar lustige persönliche Geständnisse, damit du dich besser erinnern kannst! Schalten Sie ein für Expertentipps und einen „Golden Nugget“ der Grammatik, der oft vergessen wird!
- Einführung (0:00 - 0:21)
- Einführung in Present Simple vs. Present Continuous (0:24 - 3:09)
- Permanente vs. temporäre Handlungen (3:09 - 5:20)
- Der übermäßige Gebrauch der kontinuierlichen Form durch deutsche Lerner (5:21 - 7:01)
- Present Continuous für zukünftige Vereinbarungen (7:01 - 8:38)
- Stative Verben und Ausnahmen (8:39 - 10:15)
- Golden Nugget. Verärgerung mit Present Continuous ausdrücken (10:16 - 12:42)
- Abschluss und Teaser für die nächste Folge (12:56 - 14:36)
Transcript
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, welcome to the 3 English Experts.
I'm Dave, I'm Rebecca, and I'm Birgit.
And welcome to this episode.
3 English Experts is your English podcast to help you speak better English and create a positive and happy mindset for your English learning journey.
Hello, everyone.
Welcome back to the 3 English Experts talking about hopefully an interesting subject concerning improving your English, helping to improve your English skills.
Today, we are talking about the continuous, and I'm using continuous now, we are talking about it now, right now, and the difference to the simple present.
We talk about it a lot.
We talk about it all the time on a regular basis.
You see, why do we take this subject up at all?
Because we feel that Germans might sometimes overuse the ing.
And I can tell you, I think I've discovered that it might be because there's a lot of continuous ing happening when people talk in English.
But that's not only referring to the grammar point, they are doing something right now in that very moment, the progressive, progressive grammar.
But it's also because verbs become nouns by putting an ing at the end, to cook, the cooking.
And you have some constructions, the so-called gerund construction, they need a substantivation.
But we are not going to talk about this today.
That will be too complicated.
We will cover that in a separate episode, promise.
And there's also future tense.
People talk about future with ing.
And something else we will cover at the end, or I will talk about in our golden nugget section today.
Yes.
But in general, you should really remember that it's two different tenses when you talk about something that goes on in general.
So you work as a consultant, you work as a teacher, you work in a city.
That's what you do on a regular basis, something in general.
And you shouldn't be using ing then.
And a very good explanation Rebecca came up with in one of the last months that helped me to explain it even better to students is when you use ing in construction, I'm working right now, or I'm reading an interesting book at the moment, meaning every night, but that will come to an end at some time.
And I think that's the best explanation I can give learners to think about.
Is this something that will end?
You know, it's going to be ending sometime or not.
And I think Rebecca can even explain that a little better from her native speaker point of view.
I'm not sure about better, but I can just build on what you already said.
Yeah, I think the problem is when people talk about present simple and present continuous, there's always this or progressive, just to say, we can say continuous or progressive.
I always call it continuous, but the simple explanation is permanent or temporary.
Present simple is something permanent.
And I work as a consultant and temporary is I'm living it's temporary, which doesn't really always fit.
Because if I say, well, is it permanent?
They go, well, I'm not doing it for the rest of my life.
And I think, well, no, of course not.
I live in Frankfurt, but it doesn't mean I can't change.
I can't move.
I can't see the end.
And I would say, well, can you see the end at the moment?
Can you see an end?
No.
But if you know, so you said, I work for this company, but if you know, you're leaving that company next year, you say, well, I'm working there until December and then it's changing.
So can I see the end?
If I can't see the end, then I would use present simple.
If I can see the end, I'm reading a good book at the moment, but the book will finish.
I'm studying.
Maybe you're studying for the next five years at university.
Even if it's five years away, you can still see the end.
There is an end.
That I think is sometimes helpful to decide, do I need the ing or the simple?
Dave?
Yeah, I think that's right.
And I also obviously signal words, I think are quite important at this stage for learners to try to remember which is which.
You have your signal words for the present simple, which is things that happen regularly, often, as you said, the more permanent things, the facts, facts are also more permanent than they are temporary, of course.
So as I said, every, how often, regular things, what else do we have for the more present simple forms?
Can you think of any more?
Usually.
Usually, yeah.
And then on the other side, you have the temporary.
So at the moment, if you say listen or look, that's right now, currently, presently, and also sometimes with this, if you say this week, this month, this year, or even today, that's also a temporary thing because it will end at some stage.
Exactly.
You can see the end, like we said, you can see the end of this week, hopefully.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think Birgit, you're absolutely right.
Germans, in my experience as well, learners, they tend to overuse the "-ing".
I'm also convinced they just like it because they don't have "-ing".
Yeah.
Well, we do have, we could use the progressive.
Ich bin am Arbeiten.
Ich bin am Arbeiten, yeah.
But does anybody use it?
Yeah, we don't use it.
Yeah, they like it.
I agree they like it.
But how does it sound in your ears?
Is it troubling in ways of how to understand?
I mean, you might by now know people get it wrong.
As a teacher, obviously, it's difficult because you always listen as a teacher.
You've always got your grammar ears open.
Yeah.
I'll give you an example where it was kind of funny where me and my husband were at some party with some Germans and I knew these people and he didn't know them, sort of thing.
And one of the guys turned around to my husband and went, what are you doing here?
Okay.
Which he meant, was machst du hier in Deutschland Englisch?
Was machst du beruflich?
He wanted to know what do you do here?
Where do you work?
But what are you doing here?
It's like, was zum Teufel machst du denn hier?
You're not welcome here.
What the hell are you doing here?
And of course, he knows German as well.
And he laughed.
He sort of went, I think you want to know what my job is.
Yeah.
Again, you see in that situation.
Could be misleading.
Could be misleading.
And if someone didn't understand, they were like, wow, that's pretty rude.
It's a really fine line, but can actually cause kind of, what are you doing here?
What are you doing here means, what are you doing here?
Why?
Why are you here?
Yeah.
Tricky bigot.
Yeah.
And I just want to focus again on the many uses of ing in English language.
Of course, we can talk about something is going on at the moment and something was going on in the past.
And so that's happening again and will be going on maybe at a certain point in the future.
But that brings us to another future tense, which is the present continuous.
We can actually use as a future tense and that's news for many learners because they can't remember that from school very well.
And Dave is going to talk about this now.
Basically, if you're wanting to talk about your arrangements or your appointments for the future, we often use the present progressive or continuous with the future time.
So for example, I'm meeting somebody next week on Friday, or maybe we can say I'm travelling home next week as well.
There's all these different situations when you can use appointments or arrangements, something that's in your schedule.
There are the other situations where we also use a present simple for the future.
For example, if it works from a programme or a timetable.
So if you want to say, I don't know what time does a concert start next week?
It's actually working from a programme or a timetable.
So we use the present simple and not the future form, or the will form as people.
There are one or two other small things, but they are the main things where we actually use the present simple or the present continuous in the future forms.
Yeah, I just also wanted to mention stative verbs.
So this is one thing that confuses people.
Obviously you teach the rule and you say, if you can see the end, it's present progressive.
If you can't see the end, and then they go, but what about this sentence?
So there are some verbs that generally are not used in the gerund form.
They're not used in the ing form.
And they're called what we call stative verbs, or some people call them state verbs.
For example, things like feelings or knowledge.
You say, for example, what do you want to eat right now?
I want to eat a pizza right now.
You don't say I'm wanting, even though it's a temporary feeling and maybe it's a permanent feeling.
I don't know, but it's a temporary feeling and it's right now.
It's happening now.
What do you want?
I want a pizza.
You don't say I'm wanting.
Oh, I know that.
No, I'm knowing that even though it's just happening now, or I don't understand.
Not I'm not understanding because that doesn't work because understand is the knowledge thing.
So it comes into the stative verbs.
Maybe we can put a list in the show notes of the typical stative verbs.
In the past, things like love and hate, you wouldn't put in the ing form.
You would just say I love this, but McDonald's screwed that up.
And they said, I'm loving it.
And now that's come into popular culture that everybody said, I'm loving this new show on Netflix.
Instead of I love, normally I love this new show, but I'm hating the new character on this show.
So you can actually put those in now, but that's a relatively new thing.
Thank you, McDonald's.
Yes.
Yeah.
I have the feeling that sometimes you do hear maybe that's because of everything happening in music and culture.
You do hear maybe even static verbs sometimes as then.
Would it sound like a mistake because our listeners or our Germans think about mistake?
I don't know.
Like you say, popular culture always plays around with language and so they change things and sometimes things get taken on then into popular culture.
But yeah, when you said, how does it sound?
I think when I hear those, it just sounds wrong.
I just immediately think, okay, this is non-native speaker who's talking to me when they do that.
And they like McDonald's possibly.
Maybe who doesn't?
I think also what's surprising is high level.
I have high level people who were really good and their grammar is actually really good, but they still forget and they slip up and they still use, well, I'm working here and I'm living in this part of the city.
No, I live, I work.
They still kind of slip up back into the inform, which is quite interesting.
I don't know why.
Again, it's a phenomenon, but it happens.
Yeah.
And that's exactly why we decided to make this an episode because it happens so often.
It is happening so often.
It happens so often.
This is both possible, but I will talk about this why in a minute in the golden nugget.
The golden nugget.
So the golden nugget today is talking about another feature, which is kind of exception because as I said just a second before, they are using it all the time.
They use it all the time would be the grammatical explanation.
We said all the time in general, they use it all the time.
But if somebody does something and you are annoyed about it and you want to emphasise it, you will or natives will use the continuous here.
So I very often give the example about the children because that's annoying me.
Yes.
In general, the children are always leaving their jackets on the floor.
They are not putting them away.
So obviously it's not now talking about a situation where I'm in at the moment.
I want to express my annoyance here.
And then this is when people or the English language takes to the continuous again.
With the word always, it's important.
Always, always.
Yeah, it's always there.
Always.
They're always doing that.
Oh, he's always doing that.
He's always leaving the cap off the toothpaste or something like that.
That's the stuff between couples and the household.
I was just going to say, is that your thing?
It's my pet hate.
Yes.
What are you always doing there?
Come on.
Confession.
Oh, I'm always leaving my clothes on the floor.
Oh no.
Rebecca, any confessions?
I'm always turning up the heating and he's always turning it down because I'm always cold and you're always free.
I'm always turning the heating up and he's always turning it down and we annoy each other with that, I think.
Okay.
Maybe that helps our learners to remember it now.
Absolutely.
So hopefully you found that episode interesting, maybe useful.
And next time we're going to talk about prepositions, those little words like at, on, in, by, and specifically we're going to talk about false friends and prepositions.
Perhaps there are situations when in German you might use the word in, but perhaps in English you actually need the word on.
This happens quite often and we're going to talk about our top 10 typical preposition mistakes, typical false friend preposition mistakes that we hear from our learners.
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