Discussions Discussions

Welcome to the HEP portal message boards, where you can join conversations with educators, start discussions on a topic of your choice, and post comments and questions.

For help using the message boards, click here for more information.

Important Announcement Important Announcement

 

Afghanistan Higher Education Announcement!

 

 

For some time now, the Afghanistan Higher Education portal has started its work under the Higher Education Project and wants to establish an educational competition in order to equip universities and improve the portal. Instructors from 14 faculties of education will participate in this competition and the top five faculties that would engage the most participants in the discussion board, will receive a projector and a laptop for their faculty.GLP will give five classroom projectors to the highest posting faculties of education. As you all know, every month Afghanistan Higher Education Portal introduces two educational topics for discussion in the message board and the faculty members post their responses about each topic.

 

Now, in order to increase the number of participants in the discussion as well as making academic discussion a custom/ ritual, the portal staff has established the above competition and the following criterions for this competition:

 

• By the end of December 2010, whichever faculty has the highest percentage of instructors attending these discussions and the highest number of posts, will be the winner of a projector for their faculty. The winner faculty will be chosen based on percentage system; for example if  -50 professors out of the 150 total professors from Kabul Education University participating regularly in the discussion board would count as 33%, and 13 professors out of the total 40 professors from Herat would count as 33%. GLP team would also be counting the number of posts by these professors from August through December 2010.

 

• In this competition, only discussion posted from August 1st, 2010 until December 31st, 2010 will be included.

 

• Each instructor has to write his/her name, department and province somewhere on the page when replying to a discussion post.
 
Message Boards Message Boards
Categories » [English Language Program (ELP) ] » English Language Discussion » Present continuous tense and its use
Combination View Flat View Tree View
Threads [ Previous | Next ]
Present continuous tense and its use
toggle
Present continuous tense and its use
6/21/10 1:37 PM
Hello All,

I have a question a short time ago I heard one of my students saying that Present continuous tense is to be omitted from the grammar and they well not call any tenses by this name. Their reason was that what we do is present simple and even if one second passes (one second after the action has taken place ) is the past not present.

I am trying to hear from all of you what do you think. Please add your ideas.

Thanks a lot.

Hajji Nasrat
RE: Present continuous tense and its use
7/18/10 1:30 PM as a reply to Ahmad Shah Nasrat.
Strictly speaking there are only two tenses, but the idea of tense is usually extended to include aspect and voice.

Tenses: Present, Past.
Aspects: Simple, Perfect, Progressive, Perfect Progressive
Voices: Active, Passive

Each tense can be expressed in all four aspect possibilities, so there are 8 tenses, not considering voice. Each of these 8 can be expressed in two voices, so the total number of tenses (so far) is 16.

If we add combinations with the modals (will, would, can, could, ...), the number of tenses increases considerably! Each modal can be used with the 4 aspects and 2 voices. Typically only the modal will is included in the count (I don't know why! would seems equally useful, for example, in indicating time relationships.), so this adds 8 more tenses for a total of 24 tenses. If we extend the count by including the 8 tenses which can be formed with would, we have 32 tenses in all.

reference: http://www.englishforums.com/English/HowTensesEnglishLanguage/vcwgk/post.htm
RE: Present continuous tense and its use
7/18/10 2:40 PM as a reply to Ahmad Shah Nasrat.
Dear Nasrat!

I think Present Continuous Tense and Simple Present Tense doesn't express the same things, they are both different tenses and they have different usages. I think if we omit Present Continuous Tense from Grammar, it will be incomplete.

Regards
RE: Present continuous tense and its use
present continous
7/18/10 3:52 PM as a reply to Ahmad Shah Nasrat.
We often use the present continuous tense in English. It is very different from the simple present tense, both in structure and in use.

Present Continuous Tense

Structure:
subject + auxiliary verb + main verb

Usage:
We use the present continuous tense to talk about:

* action happening now
* action in the future
RE: Present continuous tense and its use
7/17/11 10:52 AM as a reply to Ahmad Shah Nasrat.
i think present prograssive tense means that if any event is happening around you now, then we use this tense. this tense can also represent the happening in the near future.
RE: Present continuous tense and its use
7/20/11 10:39 AM as a reply to Ahmad Shah Nasrat.
These are the main usages of Present continuous tense:

1. An incomplete action which is happening at the moment of speaking.
Ex: They are listening to the teacher right now.
2. An incomplete action which is being carried out during a limited period of time, not necessarily now.
Ex: She is studying BBA this year.
3. Present continuous is used to talk about plan and arrangements in near future.
Ex: I am going to Peshawar tomorrow night.
4. Is also used to complain about regular actions or repeated ones.
Ex: He is always failing the exams.
 Help | Contact Us