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The present continuous tense is one of the most common tenses in English and it is easy to learn. It is good to use it as a model tense because it is never irregular, and because it demonstrates all core ideas of tenses perfectly.

00:00 Introduction
00:30 Core Idea of English Tenses
02:41 Auxiliary Verbs for Tenses
03:32 Present Continuous Form
03:57 The difficult thing is the verb "to be"
04:17 Positive Structure
04:36 Negative Structure
05:00 Question Structure
05:20 Contractions
06:24 Using the Present Continuous
07:53 Excercise
08:30 More help learning English

In the past, we talked about the basic structures of English sentences.
In the most common structure, the positive structure, sentences follow the pattern of Subject, Auxiliary Verb, then Main Verb. You can see this very clearly in the present continuous tense.
Look at this example: “You are watching this video”.
We always have the auxiliary verb “to be,” here it is in the form of “are”, followed by the main verb in its “-ing” form. “You” “are” “watch” “-ing”. This is always true with the present continuous tense even with irregular verbs. This is why this tense is the best to understand how tenses actually work.
We also talked about how the continuous type of action is used to show that an action is in the middle of happening. At the time the sentence is talking about, the action has already started but has not finished yet. And remember that the time of action is what time we are talking about.
So the present continuous tense is used to talk about an action that is in the middle of happening right now. It is in progress and not finished. You have already started this video, but you haven’t finished yet, so you “are watching.”

Here are some more examples
-I am writing.
-You are working
-It is growing.
In the example sentence, “You are watching”, the auxiliary verb is “are.” “Are” is a form of the verb “to be,” which is the auxiliary verb for continuous tenses. “Are” is a present form, which tells us that the tense is present. Hence present continuous!

Forming the present continuous is very easy. Use the verb “to be” as the auxiliary verb, and put the main verb in its “-ing” form. The –ing form is very straightforward. Just add “ing” to the base form of the verb! Even irregular verbs follow the same rules for their “-ing” form.

To make these sentences negative we just at the word not after the auxiliary verb.

We can also easily make these sentences into questions by starting with the auxiliary verb.

Because we use auxiliary verbs so much, we normally say them in a quick way where it blends in with the subject. We call this quick way a contraction.

The present continuous tense is often described as “happening right now,” in the current moment. But this isn’t always true. In our first two examples, if you say that, then you probably are doing that action in the current moment. You are probably currently taking a break or eating an apple. But for those second two examples, you might not be doing that action right now. If you are talking to me, you probably aren’t working on your house or reading. You might be, but that isn’t the only time you could say this. You might have been working on your house for weeks or months, and you might have started that book yesterday before bed, but you’ve put it down until the next chance you have to read. These actions have started, and they have not finished, so they are still in the middle of happening. That is exactly what the present continuous tense means.
In this lesson, we have focused on how to form the present continuous tense and on the main use of the present continuous, to talk about an action that is in the middle of happening at or around the time of speaking. There are some other uses which we will talk about in a future lesson.