Present Simple vs. Present Continuous (and then some)
by Tereza Kucera
“I can see you want to become a firefighter, but <did you understand | are you understanding | do you understand> the numerous difficulties associated with the job?”
The present simple is typically used with stative verbs that describe opinions and feelings.
Hi,
Welcome to Engramo English! This is a taste of what you can find inside our online English language course and yes, it includes comprehensive explanations such as the one above (in bold) for each correct answer. We’re now going to take a closer look at why the other two are not correct. In this case, it’s rather simple.
Based on the context, i.e. on the verb “want” being in the present simple tense in the previous clause, we know that the question is about a current state. It would not make sense to ask if the addressee “did understand” it at some point in the past since that understanding could be long gone and we want to know more about what state the addressee’s mind is in right now.
With the question of time reference (past vs. present vs. future) out of the way, let’s inspect the other incorrect answer. While things that are happening at the moment of speaking are normally described using the present continuous tense, this is not true for stative verbs such as “understand” simply because they tend to refer to slightly longer-term states and as such are not limited exclusively to the very moment of speaking. Also, we tend to reserve the use of the present continuous tense for actions and use the present simple for states when we speak about the current moment.
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