English 路 Chapter 2 路 Lesson 9 路 Grammar primer
The present continuous
How English says what is happening right now - am, is or are plus a verb ending in -ing.
The short version
Stative verbs stay in the simple form
Verbs that describe a state rather than an action avoid the continuous: know, believe, understand, like, want, need, own and belong. A useful check is whether you could honestly answer the question what are you doing with that verb. You cannot say I'm knowing, which is exactly why the form is wrong.
I know the answer.
That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.
Read the full article 路 7 min readPractice
Practise this lesson
10-question session
One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 24 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.
English 路 Free printables
Worksheets for this lesson
Worksheets with answer keys built in. Open any one to view, print or save.
Lesson 9 of 24 in this chapter