{"id":16,"date":"2009-07-12T21:46:44","date_gmt":"2009-07-13T01:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/?p=16"},"modified":"2009-07-20T13:35:03","modified_gmt":"2009-07-20T17:35:03","slug":"present-continuous-tense-in-a-dependent-clause","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/present-continuous-tense-in-a-dependent-clause\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Questions: Present Continuous Tense"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>We received the following question from one of our readers:<\/h4>\n<p>We use the present continuous tense in a complex sentence when the subordinate clause begins with when and the whole sentence refers to the future.<\/p>\n<p>Would it be incorrect to say: Before I watch TV, I&#8217;m doing my homework.<\/p>\n<h4>There are two answers:<\/h4>\n<p><strong>1)\u00a0 If you are referring to the present, to what typically happens, then the answer is &#8220;NO&#8221;, it would not be correct.<\/strong> In this case, you would say &#8220;Before I watch TV (every night), <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">I do<\/span> my homework.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>2) If you are referring to the future, such as tomorrow or tonight, then the answer is &#8220;YES AND NO&#8221;. <\/strong>The possibilities are:<\/p>\n<p>a) &#8220;Before I watch TV (tonight), <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">I&#8217;m doing<\/span> my homework.&#8221; or &#8211;<\/p>\n<p>b) &#8220;Before I watch TV (tonight), <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">I&#8217;m going to do<\/span> my homework.&#8221;\u00a0 Notice that in this case we use the present continuous form &#8221; ~ going (to)&#8221; + the base form of your main verb.<\/p>\n<p>I hope this answers your questions.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you,<\/p>\n<p>The ESL Help! Desk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We received the following question from one of our readers: We use the present continuous tense in a complex sentence when the subordinate clause begins with when and the whole sentence refers to the future. Would it be incorrect to say: Before I watch TV, I&#8217;m doing my homework. There are two answers: 1)\u00a0 If [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grammar","tag-present-continuous-tense","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97,"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/97"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eslhelpdesk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}