The Progressive Form of the Present

The Progressive Form of the Present
In many situations, you will encounter the progressive form of the present tense. There are three forms of the present in English, the simple, progressive, and emphatic. In previous section, you learned the simple forms of the verbs to be, to go, and to have. Compare the two conjugations of the verb to go:
SIMPLE PRESENT
I go you go he, she, it goes we go they go
PROGRESSIVE PRESENT
I am going you are going he, she, it is going we are going they are going To form the progressive present, use the present tense of the verb to be as an auxiliary and add the ending -ing to the infinitive. Sometimes there will be a slight spelling change:
--the boy runs -->the boy is running
--we bake a cake -->we are baking a cake
Don't be afraid to use contractions with the progressive present forms. You will hear and use I'm going or they're driving much more often that the non-contracted forms.