Progressive Aspect

 form: be + present participle (verb + ing)

 it combines with present, past and future for forms that express action at different times
 basic meaning: ongoing action at different times

1. Present Progressive

 basic meaning : ongoing action at the time of speaking

 additional meanings:
- ongoing actions around the time of speaking
- temporary actions
- punctual achievement verbs (bang, bounce, hit, kick) take on an iterative meaning
in the present progressive
- fixed plans in the near future
- repeated (habitual) actions that are irritating to the speaker
- Stative progressives
 conveying emotional intensity
-The action becomes more emotional, intense and vivid if a stative verb appears in the
present progressive instead of the simple present.: I’m lovin’ it.( slogan of Mc Donalds)
 focusing on change from the norm
-progressive statives sometimes occur with a following predicative adjective
NP + is/are + Ving + Adj
idea: behavior of the subject is not his or her usual behavior
-The notion of change can be strengthened through the use of time adverbs like today and
this week, with stative verbs of sensory perception such as feel, hear, smell and taste.
-is/are+ stative verbs of sensory perception (feel, hear, smell, taste) in the ing form + time
adverbs (today, this week):
emphasis: on the process of change
-focusing on evolving change
-stative appearance verbs (appear, resemble, seem) and stative cognitive verbs (believe,
know, mean, understand) occur in the progressive aspect when the speaker wishes the
express the idea of evolving process
 - the direction of the process is often indicated by more and more, worse and worse, faster
and faster
 Providing an informal, polite tone (requests, wishes)
-the present progressive seems less binding than the simple present, which has a general
truth meaning
-contrast:
We are hoping you can explain this mess.
We hope you can explain this mess.
 Hedging or softening a definite opinion
-cognitive stative verbs (doubt, remember, think) in the progressive aspect allow the
speaker to soften what would otherwise seem a more definitive stance (e.g to avoid
offence, to politely reject sy)

2. Past Progressive

 form : past form of be (was/were) + present participle (verb + ing)

 basic meaning: ongoing action in the past
-often: the action expressed with the past progressive was ongoing at the time another action
occurred
(the action that occurred is expressed with the simple past)
- or: two ongoing actions in the past were occurring simultaneously
 iterative sense
He was tossing and turning in his sleep all night.
 gradual processes in the past
 repeated actions irritating the speaker (with always, constantly, forever, continually, perpetually
 polite inquiries
 unfulfilled past intention, hope, expectation with verbs go, hope, expect, intend, mean: I was going to
phone her, but I forgot.

3. Future Progressive

 form: will + be + present participle (verb + ing)

 basic meaning: ongoing action in the (often near) future
 actions that will happen anyway, in the usual course of events
 polite inquiry about sy’s future plans (maybe with the intention of asking a favour) :
 logical assumptions about sy’s actions in the present
 Sequence of tense rules

-The tense of one verb may be determined by the tense of another.

this is what happens in reported speech, in which a speaker or writer reports what someone
has said or thought
Reported speech is given in a complement clause following a reporting verb (said, asked etc.)
with a past tense reporting verb:
o tenses of verbs in the reported speech are backshifted, that is, present tense forms become
past tense forms and so on.
o time expressions

- verbs in the passive sentences undergo the same shifts

Susan said “Al’s report has been published.”  Susan said that Al’s report had been published.

- shifts do not occur with past perfect or past perfect progressive verbs, as no shifts would be
possible

Certain modal auxiliaries are also backshifted:

 may for possibilitymight
may for permissioncould
 shall for future timewould
shall for suggestionshould
 can for abilitycould
 willwould
 musthad to

A shift is not necessary if:

♣ the original statement is a general truth

♣ the speaker is reporting something that is still true

♣ the speaker is reporting something that is still possible

-the use of present or future time adverbs expressions may favor the version without shifting:

♣ the speaker repeats something that he or he has just said

 Problems that Hungarian students have to face when learning the continuous aspect and the
reported speech

1. Continuous tenses

-Good news: As in all human languages, in Hungarian time is divided into three areas that can be
represented on a timeline: past, present, future.

Problems:

-Verb tenses are difficult for the Hungarian learners of English, as we don’t have such elaborated tense
systems.

-Aspect in Hungarian is a functional-semantic category lacking a regularly expressed morphological

opposition as its grammatical nucleus. Aspectual meanings are expressed by verbal prefixes, lexical means,
word order, and pragmatic factors.

perfect: „meg” / have + V3

megállt / he stood

megállok / I stand

imperfect continuous: the raw verb without „meg” + éppen, most, javában /to be + Ving

állt /he was standing

olvas / he is reading

-Specific problems:

In addition to expressing ongoing action, the present progressive can express a number of other meaning
that are difficult to memorise for a Hungarian learner.

o punctual achievement verbs (bang, bounce, hit, kick) take on an iterative meaning in the present
progressive
o expressing planned future events
o repeated (habitual) actions that are irritating to the speaker
o stative progressives
2. Reported Speech

If your students have already mastered the tenses of English Reported Speech might not be a big problem
for them, as it is not really difficult despite the fact that the sequence of tenses does not exist in Hungarian.
You need to have more past tenses so that you can actually apply a sequence of tenses.

Direct speech: The Terminator said „I’ll be back”. / A Terminátor azt mondta, Visszatérek.

Indirect speech: The Terminator said he would be back. / A Terminátor azt mondta, hogy visszatér.

However, other elements change in Hungarian too: pronouns, adverbs of place, edverbs of time

nowthen / mostakkor

todaythat day / maaznap

tomorrowthe next day / holnapa következő nap

What still makes it a bit difficult is that that are cases when backshifting does not apply.
 Suggestions for teaching Reported speech

1. Go betweens

Two students have such a problem with each other that they are refusing to speak, and another student
shuttles between them trying to find a compromise. The two students need to be sitting so far apart that they
can’t hear the other people speak and so really need to listen to the peacemaker, e.g. by sitting in different
rooms or one half of the students sitting in the corridor. Making both sides have complaints about the other
and giving out roleplay cards can also help set up this activity well, as can having different groups of
students working on different situations so that they can’t listen into the neighbouring teams.

Possible situations to roleplay include students who have problems with the other students’ behaviour in
class (speaking too much, not speaking enough, holding up the lesson because they haven’t done their
homework, distracting the teacher from the lesson plan by asking questions, etc- maybe leading onto
discussion of good classroom behaviour), neighbours, neighbouring countries, married couples, or suppliers
and customers who are near breaking point in their relationship. This can also be used for non-conflict
negotiations such as premarital contracts or price negotiations. Note that students usually get into this
activity so much that they completely forget about Reported Speech, so you might want to do this as a
controlled activity where they must make an effort to use the structures you have presented.

2. What they told you

Give the students a list of people they have probably been spoken to by in their lives (e.g. teachers,
policemen, future employers, immigration officers and market researchers) or brainstorm such a list onto the
board. Students choose one of the people on the list and say things that this person really said to them, e.g.
“He asked me whether I wanted a single or return”, and the other students guess which person from the list
was speaking. As a more challenging extension, they can continue the game with people not on the list.

This can also be done as Twenty Questions, e.g. “Has this person ever asked you whether you were carrying
any drugs?” This game links well with the vocabulary of jobs or practising situational language such as “At
the airport”. The same game can also be done with the vocabulary of relationships like “colleague”,
“acquaintance” and “classmate”.
3. Reported Speech sentence completion guessing game

Give the students a list of sentence stems that should be completed with reported speech such as “I forgot to
tell someone…”, “ or “Someone told me that I…”. They complete as many sentences as they can and then
read out only the part they have written for the other students to guess which sentence that comes from.

4. Referring to who guessing game

Students report something they said or heard about someone else, e.g. gossip about someone famous, news
about a politician, a reviewer’s opinion on someone’s acting or a colleague slagging off their boss, and the
other students guess who was being spoken about.

5. Which occasion

Students tell their partners something that was said to them at an important time, e.g. when they graduated
from university or the first time their parents talked to them about sex, and their partners guess which
occasion that thing was said at. The list of occasions can be given as a worksheet or brainstormed onto the
board. This topic can easily be extended into an interesting cross cultural discussion on the traditional lack
of school graduation ceremonies in the UK etc.

6. And this is how I felt sentence completion

Students report something that was said to them or they heard that they had a strong emotional reaction to
and the other students guess what their reaction was. This ties in well with a lesson on adjectives, and you
can maybe give them a worksheet with some suggested adjectives on or brainstorm them before the activity,
such as “… and I felt sad/ hungry/ romantic/ nostalgic/ old/ young/ flattered”

7. Reported mingling

Almost any mingling activity (e.g. Find Someone Who) can be extended to include reported speech by
people reporting back to their partners or the class what they learnt. Before doing this you will need to
decide whether you want to encourage them to use Reported Speech or whether it is something you hope
will come up naturally and that you might bring up later in an error correction stage.1

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http://edition.tefl.net/ideas/games/reported-speech/
 Suggestions for teaching tenses

1. PERSONAL / PROFESSIONAL

Dictate to the students the instruction to draw a chart. „Get a blank piece of paper. Put it vertical. Draw a
large rectangle that just fits inside the page. Divide the rectangle into three columns, the first column is thin
and the remaining two are of equal width. Draw three equal rows. In the top of the third column, first row
write the word PERSONAL. In the top of the third column write the word PROFESSIONAL. In the first
row, first column write the word Past. Int he forst column, second row write the word Future. Int he first
column third row write the word Present. Students then write notes in each of the boxes. They then take it in
turns to read out the notes as statements to their partners who asks them further questions about the
statement and so generate a converstaion practicing the past, present, future tenses.

If you also want to practice the Reoprted Speech: have the students tell what they learnt about their
partners.2

2. Present Continuous Mimes

Students mime whole Present Continuous sentences until the other students say the whole correct sentence.
It is important they don’t stop until people guess to give the idea of an action in progress. 2. What am I
(doing)? Students mime different actions you can do with one object . Their partners […]

3. Who is doing?

In this variation on Mimes, students test each other on which people in the class are doing various things,
with the person answering having to close their eyes.

4. Guess the family member (in pairs)

Students describe what one of their family members is (maybe) doing now until the others students guess
what the relationship is. To make it more challenging, they can start off with vague clues (”This person is
breathing”) and the people guessing can have a limited number of guesses.

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Michael Fennel
5. Ask and tell (Present Simple & Present Continuous)

Students make Present Continuous and Present Simple questions, then flip a coin to see whether they will
have to answer the question themselves (tails = tell) or be allowed to ask the question to someone else
(heads = ask). This is more fun that it sounds because many present tense questions are quite personal and
the person who has made the question will often be dismayed by having to answer their own question. You
can make this more risqué and add vocabulary by suggesting words and expressions that they can or must
include in their questions, e.g. “snore” and “itchy”. Alternatively, they could roll a dice to decide which
tense they should use in their questions (e.g. Present Simple if they throw a one, two or three), or the topic
they should ask about (e.g. families if they throw a one).

6. Test your classmates

Students test each other on the present dress and actions and routines of their classmates with questions like
“What is George wearing on his feet?” and “Does Ronaldo often wear glasses?” Students will need to have
their eyes closed when they are being tested, and they might need to check some of the answers with the
person who the question is about.3

7. Guess the place at a point (future perfect continuous)

Students imagine a future holiday and describe what they will be doing there this time tomorrow/next
week/next month until their partner guesses the place. You can also practise difficult to pronounce or
difficult to remember country names like “Belgium” and “The Philippines” by including them in a list of
suggested places.

8. Guess the future year (future perfect continuous)

Students make statements about their own lives, their classmates’ lives and life in general such as “We will
all be wearing HUD sunglasses” until their partners guess what year they mean. Any wrong guesses should
be commented on with clues like “These things could be true in that year too, but I think they will happen a
little later”.

9. What were you doing when…? (Past Simple)

Often you can use Past Continuous tense to talk about memories, or for looking back on what was
happening at a specific time. With this activity students ask each other questions that they may or may not
remember the answer to. For example What were you doing last Tuesday night at dinner time? or What were

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you doing when xx important thing happened? You can explain that some historical events or other news
events leave such an impression on us, we will always remember what we were doing at the time that thing
happened. Sometimes our memories are very clear and sometimes they are not. You may want to provide
prompts so the students get the idea and then have them generate their own questions. Some ideas for
prompts are:

 9/11

 The earthquake

 Last Thursday at dinner time

 Princess Diana died

You can also make this into a bluff game by telling students who don’t remember to make
something up. For example, I was doing laundry when my mom called or I was driving my car when
I heard about 9/11. Their partners can then guess whether the answer is true or not.