Continuous Tenses
We use the Continuous Tenses to talk about things which are happening over a period of time. With continuous tenses we highlight the duration of an event.
Continuous tenses usually talk about things which are happening for a while only - they will stop sometime.
Verbs in the continuous tenses always express actions that are taking place during a specific time in the present, past or future.
So a verb in the Present Continuous usually expresses an action taking place at the present moment.
The Past Continuous is used to express an action taking place during another action in progress at the time.
or to express an action in progress interrupted by antoher action in the past.
The Future Continuous is used to express an action expected to be taking place during another relative time in the future.
The perfect tenses can also be expressed in the continuous form.
Exceptions
Some verbs contain in their meaning an idea of permanency and because of this they are not used in the continuous form. For example, when we use the verb like, we are talking about a feeling we have which will last for a long time:
For this reason, we do not usually use like in a continuous tense.
There are other verbs generally used only in simple tenses, for example:
- verbs of mental activity: know, understand, think
- verbs of emotions: like, love, hate, desire
- verbs of senses: see, smell, touch, taste, hear
- verbs of possession: own, belong, possess, have
- verbs of reporting: say, tell, ask, answer
- miscellaneous verbs: need, contain, depend, consist, seem
With verbs of perception we can often use can:
We can use some of the verbs listed above in continuous tenses but their meaning changes when we do. They refer not only to what is happening right now but they also tells us it is an active effort:
We never use have in a continuous way to mean possession. If however we want to give the idea that we are making an active effort then we can use have in the continuous form:
