Improve your English today at ANGLOPOD.COM. Hi everyone, I’m Dan and today we’re going to continue to learn about English tenses by taking a look at verbs in English that are never, or hardly ever, used in the continuous form.

In the previous lesson, we learnt about the difference between the present simple and continuous tense and how the meaning can change when the form of the verb changes. However, there are some verbs that we just don’t use in the continuous form. For example, you say: “I LIKE these shoes”. You don’t say: “I AM LIKING these shoes”. That just sounds very strange.

These verbs normally refer to how we feel, what we like and what we believe. Here are a few more examples. You would say: “I LIKE these shoes. They FIT me really well. But I KNOW I can’t afford them because they COST too much!” All these verbs are in the present simple. They would sound very strange in the continuous form, so you couldn’t say ‘liking’, ‘fitting’, ‘knowing’ and ‘costing’ here.

Even though it might be possible to use these verbs in the present continuous in your language, it is not possible in English. Remember, verbs that refer to the way we feel, such as LIKE and LOVE, are normally just present simple. Also, verbs that describe belief, like BELIEVE or KNOW, and the senses, like SEE or HEAR, are normally just present simple.

It is sometimes possible to use the continuous form for some of these verbs, but it changes the meaning. If you say: “I think I AM SEEING things” for example, it means ‘imagining something that’s not real’. If you say: “I AM SEEING someone”, it means ‘dating’.

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