The Present continuous inSpanish.

In this lesson you are going to kill three birds with one stone.
(matar 3 pajaros de un tiro)

You will practice:
1. The verb estar in the present. Estoy, estás, está, estamos etc
2. You will learn the present continuous.
3. You will learn 33 simple verbs in Spanish.

The present continuous (also called the present progressive) is used to talk about something that is happening now.

The present continuous is formed by combining the verb “to be” with the present participle.
(The present participle is the -ing form of a verb.)

It is very similar to English.

Examples:

I am dancing = Estoy bailando
They are singing = Estan cantando.

The ing form of the verb is called a gerund. This is how we make the gerund in Spanish.

VERB TYPE	FORMATION	EXAMPLE	TRANSLATION
AR verbs	Stem + ando	Hablando	Speaking
IR verbs	Stem + iendo	Escribiendo	Writing
ER verbs	Stem + iendo	Aprendiendo	Learning

There are quite a lot of irregular gerunds but most of them are too obscure for the level of this course but here are some more useful ones to know:

Leer - Leyendo - Reading
Creer - Creyendo - Believing
Oír - Oyendo - Hearing
Incluir - incluyendo - Including

There are also some stem changing ones:
decir - diciendo - Saying
dormir - durmiendo - Sleeping
morir - muriendo - Dying

The gerund of ir (to go) is yendo but it is not very common.

Note: We don't use the present continuous to refer to the future like we do in English we wonly use it for actions that are in progress.

Note: In Spanish the present simple can also be used like the present continuous.
You may notice that
¿qué haces? (What do you do?) and ¿qúe estás haciendo? (What are you doing?) can both be translated to English as What are you doing?