The present progressive or continuous

The present progressive or sometimes called present continuous is used for ongoing actions – actions that are happening at the moment. Now you are reading these words and are learning something about an important  tense in English. At the moment and now are keywords for the present progressive.

I am writing these words and hopefully

you are learning something now!

I schreibe (gerade) diese Worte und hoffentlich lernen Sie jetzt (gerade) etwas !

Forms:

For the present progressive you use a form of the auxiliary “to be” and the –ing form of the verb. 

I  am     seeing                   ich sehe (gerade) , „ich bin beim Sehen“

you  are  seeing                  du siehst

he, she, it is seeing             er, sie es sieht

we are     seeing                 wir sehen

you  are   seeing                 ihr seht

they are   seeing                 sie sehen

It is no coincidence that the German translation is the same as the one for simple present !

For questions and negations you don´t need a form of “to do” like in simple present, you always have a form of “to be”.

Q  -  Questions

Are we going there, too ?

Is she working at the moment?

Why are we learning English at the moment ?

Hey Jake, what are you doing ?

Look at him over there, what is he working at ?

N  -  Negations

I do not quite follow you !

He does not live in this street, he lives the other end of the town.

I don’t know that.

You don’t walk on water !

She doesn’t smoke at work.

You can see, that for the negations “do not” or “does not” the short forms don’t and doesn’t are used.