Progressive Tenses

I. Intro

In this lesson, we are going to learn the -ing form of verbs in Spanish. Luckily for us, this form functions very much like it does in English. We use the verb to be (in this case, estar) + the verb + an ending called the present participle, or gerund.

When estar is used in the present tense + a gerund, it’s called the present progressive.
When estar is used in the past or imperfect tense + a gerund, it’s called the past progressive.

II. Form

You may remember that in English, the gerund is made by adding -ing to the base form of a verb. For example:

He + is + speaking. Is + she + speaking? I + am + eating. Are + you + eating?

In Spanish, we take an infinitive verb, drop the infinitive ending, and add -ando to -ar verbs, and -iendo to -er and -ir verbs. And that’s it!

Él está hablando. ¿Está hablando ella? Yo estoy comiendo. ¿Estás comiendo tú?

Object pronouns can be attached to the end of a gerund, just like they can be attached to the end of the infinitive. This makes no difference to the meaning, and is a matter of personal preference decided at the moment of speaking.