I Am Doing (Present Continuous)
I Do (Present Simple)

• For the present continuous we use ‘I am doing’. This means that the action is occurring at that time of speaking.

For example: ‘I am washing up.’

This means at the time when I said ‘I am washing up’ I was actually washing up.

• For the present simple we use ‘I do’. This means that the action is not taking at this instant, however, the action takes place sometimes . Moreover, this means that when we use the present simple ‘I do’ we are speaking in the past tense.

There are some verbs where you don’t use them in present continuous. (You don’t say I am _____-ing)

These verbs are known as non continuous verbs or stative verbs.

The more common name isstative verbs.

Examples of these stative verbs that you cannot use in the present continuous are:

to know, to have, to see, to be, to believe, to suppose, to remember, to suppose, to appear, to hate, to like, to love, to prefer, to feel, to hear, to smell, to taste, to agree, to promise, to surprise, to imagine, to realise, to recognise, to remember, to understand, to need, to own, to want, to forget, to depend

I am doing (present continuous), I do (present simple) Exercises

1. Read the following paragraph about Jack and then answer the questions either responding with ‘Yes, he does’ , ‘No, he doesn’t’ , ‘Yes, he is’ , ‘No he isn’t’.

Jack is 26 years old. He has two sisters and no brothers. Jack is a teacher and works Monday-Friday. Every day he wakes up at 6 o’ clock in the morning to get to work. He doesn’t have a car so he has to wake up early to get the bus to the school that he works at. His mum cleans his room for him because, he has no time in the morning as he is rushing to get to work. He never has breakfast at home because he doesn’t have time. He gets to work early and so he has breakfast at the work.

• Is Jack 25 years old? _____________________________________________________
• Does Jack wake up at 9 o clock? ____________________________________________
• Is he working tomorrow? _________________________________________________
• Does he clean his own room? ______________________________________________
• Does he drive a car? _____________________________________________________
• Does he eat breakfast? ___________________________________________________
• Is Jack a teacher? ________________________________________________________
•  Is Jack an engineer? ______________________________________________________
• Does he eat breakfast at home? ____________________________________________
• Is he early to work?______________________________________________________
• Does he have a sister? ____________________________________________________
• Does he have a brother? __________________________________________________

2. Fill in the missing gap for the following present continuous sentences.

• ____________________________ pizza.
• ____________________________ my bedroom.
• ____________________________to the supermarket.

3. Fill in the missing gap for the following present simple sentences.

• My brother __________ at 7pm.
• She ____________ Spanish.
• I _________ my homework at school.

4. Name 3 stative verbs

• ______________________
• ______________________
• ______________________

Challenge: With the stative verbs you have mentioned above, write 5 sentences using each verb in each sentence.