yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Progressive Aspect | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

Hello, grammarians! Let's talk about the progressive aspect.

So, we talked about the simple aspect as something that is just the most bare form. It's what you see here: I walk, I will walk, I walked.

But aspect allows us to talk about things that are ongoing, and that's what we call the progressive. Because it's progressing, it's going, it's happening.

So, if we are telling a story and we are inside that moment, we can use the progressive aspect. So, "I walk" becomes in the present "I am walking."

The way the progressive works is that it takes the form of "to be" for whatever the subject of the sentence is—in this case, "I"—and it changes the verb into an -ing verb. That's what it does; that's what the progressive does.

Its effect is to say that something is ongoing. This is also called the continuous aspect, but I like to call it the progressive aspect.

Let's try this in all the different basic conjugations. So, we call this the present progressive. Let's try the past progressive.

So, if it says, "I walked," we would just take the verb "to be" and then put it in the past. So, this part doesn't change—the walking doesn't change. You would say, "I was walking."

Likewise, for the future. So, we're not going to change the walking part; we're just going to put this "am" part into the future, which is like, "So, I will be walking."

That's the future progressive.

So, the way to remember the progressive aspect is for me to hideously butcher the writing of David Mamet and tell you to always remember your ABCs: always be conjugating.

Conjugating here is just a word that means, uh, to put verbs in different tenses and aspects. But I really want you to focus on the fact that we've got this "b" and this "ing."

So, just remember "b" and "ing," and that's how you form the progressive.

So, no matter whether or not it's happening in the past, it's still "I was walking."

So, the part that changes is the "b," is the verb "to be": "I was walking, I am walking, I will be walking."

The part that doesn't change is the walking, and that's how you express that something is ongoing, that something is continuously happening in the telling of the story.

Standing this will enable you to master time. You can learn anything.

Dave it out.

More Articles

View All
Saving Ocean Biodiversity: Coral Restoration | Explorers in the Field
[Music] First of all, to die just to die for me. Since the beginning, it was the best. I say, yeah, I have to find a way to be more often sooner. It’s like to go and to see an action movie; you see the fishes, a big school of fishes moving, and then to se…
Solve by completing the square: Non-integer solutions | Algebra I | Khan Academy
Let’s say we’re told that zero is equal to x squared plus six x plus three. What is an x, or what our x is that would satisfy this equation? Pause this video and try to figure it out. All right, now let’s work through it together. So the first thing that…
AC analysis superposition
So in the last video, we talked about Oilers formula, and then we showed the expressions for how to extract a cosine and a sine from Oilers formula. We have a powerful set of expressions there for relating exponentials to sine waves. Now, I want to show …
The Simplest Math Problem No One Can Solve - Collatz Conjecture
This is the most dangerous problem in mathematics, one that young mathematicians are warned not to waste their time on. It’s a simple conjecture that not even the world’s best mathematicians have been able to solve. Paul Erdos, a famous mathematician, sai…
Introducing Khan Academy Kids
Hi everyone, Sal here with my three-year-old son Azad, and we’re excited to announce the launch of Khan Academy Kids, which is designed to take students like Azad, ages two to five, to become lifelong learners. Hi friends, welcome to my room! Kids love t…
Ray Dalio on the Keys to Success
What are some of the keys to success? And beyond success, fulfilling success to a fulfilled life that you’ve seen in your experience? Well, I think you have to define what success is for yourself. I don’t think it’s the accoutrements of, um, necessarily …