Progressive or continuous tenses tell you what is/was or is going to be happening at a specific moment in time.
We are going to focus on the future continuous in this mini lesson. To conjugate it, we need 2 separate verbs. The first is referred to as the auxiliary verb – for progressive/continuous tenses this verb will be “estar”. We are going to use the simple future tense of estar.
E.g. estaré, estarás, estará, etc.
The second verb will be a gerund. This is the “-ing” ending form of the verb in English.
For regular -AR verbs you remove the -AR and add “-ando”.
For regular -ER and -IR verbs you remove the -ER and -IR and add “iendo”.
For irregular verbs: Verbs ending in -er and -ir with a vowel before the ending, i.e. -aer, -uir, -eer, oir. We exchange the ‘i’ in -iendo for a ‘y’. E.g. creer = creyendo.
The verb “ir” meaning ‘to go’ is completely irregular and becomes ‘yendo’.
For stem changing verbs (in the present tense) that follow an e > i or e > ie stem change, swap the ‘e’ for an ‘i’ and add the regular gerund ending. E.g. preferir = prefiriendo.
For stem changing verbs (in the present tense) that follow an o > ue stem change, swap the ‘o’ for a ‘u’ and add the regular gerund ending. E.g. dormir = durmiendo.
For -IR verbs that have a vowel change ‘e > i’ and that have an -e immediately before the -ir lose the -e from the stem. E.g. reir = riendo.
| Simple future tense of ESTAR | Gerund examples of regular verbs |
| Estaré | Bailando (bailar infinitive) |
| Estarás | Cantando (cantar infinitive) |
| Estará | Comiendo (comer infinitive) |
| Estaremos | Bebiendo (beber infinitive) |
| Estaréis | Escribiendo (escribir infinitive) |
| Estarán | Viajando (viajar infinitive) |
E.g. El año próximo estaré estudiando el español – Next year I will be studying Spanish.
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