All the different CONTINUOUS forms
There are several continuous tenses in English, and all of them are similar in form:
- they use BE + the –ing form of another verb.
– It is the form of the verb BE that indicates the tense (time).
ACTIVE TENSES
- I am playing football (Present continuous)
- She was walking down the road (Past continuous)
- We have been studying all evening (Present perfect continuous)
- They had been living there for 2 months when the chimney collapsed. (Past perfect continuous)
- John will be playing rugby at 10.05 tomorrow (Future continuous)
- By this time next year Mary will have been teaching for 40 years (Future perfect continuous)
Continuous with MODALS
To form a Continuous verb using a modal:
add “be” (in the correct form of infinitive) and the principle verb with ing
- He can’t be living there anymore (Can)
- She should be arriving in 5 minutes time (Should)
- Your pulse has to be beating fast before you work out (have to)
- Max might be playing tennis on Saturday (might)
- etc etc
PASSIVE VERBS
To form a Continuous verb in the Passive form:
use the correct continuous form of the verb “be” and then add the participle of the principle verb
- Alex’s car is being repaired this morning (Present Continuous Passive)
- The house was being painted when it started to rain (Past Continuous)
All the continuous tenses (present, past, future, perfect) are similar in use but not exactly the same–and they are used for talking about different moments in time.
We have more articles about the Present Continuous/ Present progressive: there is an introduction to the present Continuous which shows how to form the verb form , there is also one that shows how we use the present continuous for the future. Other things to consider are how the present continuous is used for temporary situations and which verbs are considered non continuous verbs although some of these have different meanings in the continuous and non continuous
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