Hello.
Hi!
What were you doing Sunday afternoon?
I was reading a book.
Oh, cool.
When did you start the book?
About a week ago.
And have you finished it?
Yeah, on Tuesday.
Okay, so you didn’t read all of it on Sunday.
No, I was in the middle of it.
What’s something that you started and finished on Sunday?
Um, I visited my grandparents.
Alright.
What’s something you did every Sunday this summer?
I visited my grandparents.
Okay, cool.
We’ve got two types of tenses here.
You said you visited your grandparents last Sunday
and that you visited your grandparents every Sunday.
Those are both in the Past Simple tense.
Also, I’ll visit my grandparents next Sunday, because I still visit my grandparents every Sunday.
Okay, great.
Those were in the Future Simple tense and the Present Simple tense.
Do you know what these four variations of your sentence have in common?
What?
You’re thinking about ‘visit’ as a whole thing.
Either you considered one visit from start to finish,
or your visits are a habit or routine that doesn’t have a start and finish in sight,
so you consider how it’s always true.
Hm.
Okay, so it’s like seeing the big picture.
Yeah, that's a good way of looking at it.
But what about reading that book?
Well, you just asked about Sunday, and I only read part of it in the middle,
so that’s not really the big picture.
When we’re looking at only a portion of the time an action lasted,
we use a Progressive or Continuous tense, instead of a Simple tense.
Can you tell us how these verbs are different?
Yeah, they end with I-N-G.
That’s true, but there’s more.
You also need some form of TO BE in front of the main verb.
Don’t forget about those.
Okay.
Whether they’re in the past, present, or future,
Progressive and Continuous tenses tell us that the verb is temporary,
which means we know it will finish relatively soon, but it hasn’t finished yet.
But I finished reading that book on Tuesday, remember?
Sure, NOW it’s finished.
But our context was Sunday afternoon.
What do you mean by ‘context’?
It’s like a window.
You can’t always see everything on the other side, so just focus on what you can see.
If our window was Sunday afternoon, and that’s all we’re focusing on, did you finish?
No, I didn’t.
I see what you mean.
So that’s an example of Past Progressive.
What about the present?
What’s something you’re doing right now that you haven’t finished?
I’m talking to you.
That’s true.
We started a couple minutes ago and we’re still going.
What about the future?
I think it’s a bad idea for your friends to call you at 2am tomorrow.
Yeah, I’ll be sleeping.
Right.
You haven’t started sleeping yet, but in the context of tomorrow morning,
you'll be in the middle of your sleep, and you won’t be ready to wake up.
No way!
Okay, so the progressive tense is the same, whether our window is
sometime in the past, in the present, or in the future.
That’s right;
if you understand the Progressive/Continuous aspect, you can apply it to any time,
and all that needs to change is the form of the helping verbs.
Great!
Let’s look at some variations of the unfinished usage.
If we’re telling a story or a joke, you might use a progressive tense to set the scene.
Oh, like, “It’s Saturday morning.
The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and I’m riding my bike through the park.
Out of nowhere, a sparrow lands on my shoulder.”
That’s a wonderful example!
Thanks!
We can also use the progressive for an action that’s interrupted by another action.
Like “Tyrone was watching TV when the doorbell rang.”
Or, “I was minding my own business, when all of the sudden…”
Yeah, great!
And if we want to talk about multiple verbs that happened around the same time,
we might use a progressive or continuous tense for a longer action.
Hm, like “My friend visited me while I was living in South America.”
Another terrific example.
Similarly, we might use the progressive tense to emphasize how long a verb lasts.
So instead of “Camila took a long time to return my phone call,”
you might say...
“Camila was taking forever to get back to me!”
Exactly.
Now, sometimes the verb is happening at the very moment of our context.
We can see it in our window.
Right.
Other times, it’s not active in that moment,
but perhaps it’s an ongoing verb that serves a more descriptive purpose.
Either way, it’s already started, but it hasn’t finished yet.
Oh.
And this is the difference between Progressive and Continuous tenses.
In the former, we focus on the verb being active,
while in the later, we focus on the verb being ongoing.
Umm, maybe you can give an example this time.
Let’s say, “Nadia is studying Biology.”
If it’s progressive, then Nadia is in her room or at the library right now,
taking notes or reading her textbook or something.
Okay.
But if it’s continuous,
then it probably means that she’s taking a Biology class this semester
or she’s majoring in Biology or whatever,
but at this very moment, she might be sitting down to dinner with her family, for example.
Okay, I see the difference, but they’re pretty similar.
Yeah, because they’re both unfinished.
And they both use be verb-ing.
And what if you want to say the verb is both active and ongoing?
You can do that, because there’s certainly a lot of overlap between the two.
These are all reasons why books and teachers generally don’t explain the differences
between Progressive and Continuous.
They’ll pick one term to talk about both.
You don’t even need to know which is which.
Then why are you telling me this?
Because you do need to know both ways to use these tenses,
and that while be verb-ing is often active in the moment, it doesn’t have to be.
It just has to be something temporary that isn’t finished yet.
So we don’t use it for verbs that are finished, right?
Or whenever we see the big picture?
Right.
And there are some verbs that we call ‘stative’ verbs, which should NOT be used for progressive/continuous.
Some of these are immediate, …
… so they finish as soon as they start.
Others are permanent,
... so they never end.
(or the end is irrelevant)
Then there are verbs that link subjects to adjectives, but only the static ones are stative.
As opposed to what?
Dynamic linking verbs can be progressive/continuous, which leads us to the final variation of unfinished verbs.
What’s that?
We can use these tenses to show how things are changing.
Like “I was getting thirsty.”
After the window, I was more thirsty than I was before the window.
Yep.
If instead we say “I got thirsty,” we just focus on how it ended.
But “I was getting thirsty” shows us the actual change.
Okay, I think I got it.
There are a lot a variations to remember.
Well, there are a lot of ways to apply it,
but what you really need to know comes down to this:
for your context, is the verb temporary, and is it finished yet?
If we’re just talking about part of when it happened instead of talking about the big picture,
we need to use be verb-ing.
That’s right!