Learn CONTINUOUS TENSES in English the EASY way!

Do you hate grammar? I do! That’s why I love teaching easy tricks to make learning English grammar easy. Today, I’m going to teach you an easy trick to make the continuous tense easy! To start with, this tense is sometimes called ‘continuous’ and sometimes called ‘progressive’. Now that you know that, check out this lesson so you can improve your English grammar. Past, present, and future – we’ll cover them all. I promise this won’t be a regular boring grammar lesson, because learning English with Ronnie is always FUN and EXCITING! Right? Right! http://www.engvid.com/learn-continuous-tenses-in-english-the-easy-way/

TRANSCRIPT

Quack, quack. Hi, my name’s Ronnie, and I’m going to go over some grammar with you. Do you hate grammar as much as I do? Oh, it’s so confusing. I really, really, really love teaching, but I really hate grammar. But I want to make it easy for you, so I found a new trick. Yes! Check this out. Tricks by Ronnie. Ronnie’s turning tricks. [Laughs] We’re going to do a little review to help you always get this continuous or progressive tense malarkey down pat. There is one method or one trick that’s really cool. Ready?

Meow. The answer is verb+ing. So, I want you to remember one thing from this lesson. In English, as soon as you have something that’s continuous or progressive, which is exactly the same… Sometimes your textbook will say "continuous", some textbooks or some people will say "progressive". It’s exactly the same. But what you have to know and the cool trick is that as soon as you have continuous or progressive, all this means is somewhere in the magic of the sentence there’s going to be verb+ing. Cool. So, present continuous, past continuous, future continuous, somewhere in these sentences, you’re going to have a verb+ing. The more you study grammar, you get into past perfect continuous. Oh. Present perfect continuous. Don’t worry about those right now, but just remember that whatever you have in progressive or continuous is going to have verbing somewhere in the sentence.

So let’s just go through the easy parts. We’re going to start, as we should, with the present tense. So present continuous or present progressive is the subject, plus, in this sentence, because it’s present tense, we’re going to have the present tense of the verb "to be". So: "is", "am", "are" makes this present, "is", "am", "are". Negative: "isn’t", "am not", or "aren’t". Plus your continuous verbing. So, present continuous is subject plus "is", "am", "are", and your magic verbing. Cool. As an example… [Makes noises] I am watching you. Or you are watching me, aren’t you? Yeah, you’re watching me, but I’m watching you. "I am watching" you. "She is learning.", "They are listening." So, this is our example of "am", "is", "are", plus verbing. Negative example: "He isn’t sleeping." Are you sleeping? Wake up. Come on. He isn’t sleeping. You’re not sleeping. Good. When we use this grammar, we have subject plus the verb "to be", plus our magic verbing. We use present continuous for actions that are only happening right now at the moment. You cannot use this at any other point. You cannot say: "Yesterday, I am eating." Oh, Ronnie confused. Yesterday, yesterday, yesterday, yesterday. Ah, haha: "was eating" is good because this is past continuous.

So this is where, and probably the first and only time in your life, grammar’s going to make sense. If present continuous or present progressive is the verb "to be" plus verbing, the only thing that we’re going to change to make it past is we’re going to change the verb "to be" into the past tense, which is "was" or "were". So to change it from present continuous to past continuous, you’re just changing "to be" verb. And then, of course, you’re going to add the verbing, because this is our magic. For example: "He was walking…" He was walking down the street. Usually, when we use past continuous or past progressive, we use it for telling a story. So, if you want to tell your friend about something really crazy that happened yesterday: "We were talking, and all of a sudden, a giant panda bear came out and gave us a kiss." Yeah, good story, buddy. "I wasn’t talking to him…" This is an example of the negative. So, you can use "was", "wasn’t", "were", or "weren’t". Remember: "He was", "We were", "I wasn’t". Be careful with your subject and your verb agreement. This is really important in all of the grammar.