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Present progressive tense

You use this tense when you want to write or talk about what is happening now and is currently in progress. For instance:

I am running quickly.

This tells the reader that, at the moment, I am running at a fast speed. It also tells the reader that this is an ongoing event, and that it is continuing to happen at this moment.

‘Running’, in this case, is the present participle. Now, a present participle by itself is just an adjective. But, the trick in this sentence is that the present participle is combined with the preposition ‘am’ before it, which makes the two words together into a compound verb - ‘am running’.