Present Simple vs. Continuous Exercises

Reading & Grammar: Present Simple vs. Continuous

We use Present Simple for routines (every day). We use Present Continuous for right now (today/at the moment).

Present Simple (Habit)	Present Continuous (Now)
I usually drink coffee.	But today I am drinking tea.
She works every day.	She is not working right now.

Glossary

Click the speaker icon 🔊 to hear the pronunciation.

Accountant A person who works with money numbers. စာရင်းကိုင်

Hiking Walking a long distance in nature. ခြေကျင်ခရီးထွက်ခြင်း (တောင်တက်ခြင်း)

Scenery The beautiful view of nature. ရှုခင်း

Heavy Weighing a lot; difficult to carry. လေးလံသော

Boots Strong shoes that cover the ankle. ဘွတ်ဖိနပ်

Normally Usually; typically. ပုံမှန်အားဖြင့်

Fresh air Clean air outside. လေကောင်းလေသန့်

A Different Kind of Saturday

James is an accountant. He lives in the busy city of London. Normally, from Monday to Friday, James wears a suit and works in a tall office building. He usually sits at a computer all day and looks at numbers. He does not like loud noises, but the city is always very noisy.

However, today is Saturday, and everything is different. James is not working today. Right now, he is standing on top of a green hill in the countryside. He is wearing strong hiking boots and a warm jacket. He is not looking at a computer screen; he is looking at the beautiful scenery.

He is breathing the fresh air and smiling. He is carrying a heavy backpack with his lunch inside. James loves nature. He thinks hiking is much better than working!

Exercise 1: True or False

1. James usually works in an office.

2. He is wearing a suit right now.

3. He is hiking in the countryside today.

4. He is looking at a computer at the moment.

Exercise 2: Choose the correct option

Decide if it is a Routine (Simple) or Happening Now (Continuous).

1. I usually ____ to work.

2. Shh! The baby ____ right now.

3. She ____ tennis every Sunday.

4. Look! We ____ new words.

5. He ____ meat; he is a vegetarian.

Exercise 3: Signal Words

Which tense do we use with these words?

1. "Look!" / "Listen!"

2. "Usually" / "Always" / "Every day"

3. "At the moment" / "Right now"

Exercise 4: Fill in the Blanks

Type the verb in the correct form (Simple or Continuous).

1. (read) She usually books at night, but tonight she a magazine.

2. (work) My father in a bank. He there right now.

3. (rain) It often in June, but it today.

Exercise 5: Routine vs. Right Now

This is a long writing task. Imagine you are on holiday. Compare your normal life with your holiday life.

Please answer these questions in your story:

What do you normally do on Monday mornings? (Use Present Simple)
What do you normally eat for breakfast? (Use Present Simple)
Where are you right now? (Use Present Continuous)
What are you doing at this moment? (Use Present Continuous)
What are you eating or drinking right now? (Use Present Continuous)
Are you enjoying yourself?

(Write your story in a notebook).

Useful Words for Writing

On holiday အားလပ်ရက်ခရီးထွက်နေသည်

Relaxing အနားယူနေသည်

Beach ကမ်းခြေ

Hotel ဟိုတယ်

Normally ပုံမှန်အားဖြင့်

Busy အလုပ်ရှုပ်သော

Sample Answer (English):
Normally, on Monday mornings, I wake up early and go to school. I usually eat a quick breakfast, like toast or cereal. I study hard and sit in a classroom all day. My life is very busy.

But right now, I am on holiday in Thailand. Everything is different. At this moment, I am sitting on a beautiful beach. I am wearing sunglasses and a hat. I am not studying; I am relaxing. I am drinking fresh coconut water and eating tropical fruit. I am listening to the sound of the ocean. I am enjoying my holiday very much!

Myanmar Translation:
ပုံမှန်အားဖြင့် တနင်္လာနေ့မနက်တွေမှာ ကျွန်တော်/ကျွန်မ စောစောထပြီး ကျောင်းသွားပါတယ်။ ပေါင်မုန့်ကင် သို့မဟုတ် ကောက်နှံစာ (cereal) လိုမျိုး မနက်စာကို အမြန်စားလေ့ရှိပါတယ်။ ကျွန်တော်/ကျွန်မ စာကို ကြိုးစားလုပ်ပြီး တစ်နေ့လုံး အတန်းထဲမှာ ထိုင်နေရပါတယ်။ ကျွန်တော့်ရဲ့ဘဝက အရမ်းအလုပ်ရှုပ်ပါတယ်။

ဒါပေမဲ့ အခုချိန်မှာတော့ ထိုင်းနိုင်ငံမှာ အားလပ်ရက်ခရီးထွက်နေပါတယ်။ အရာအားလုံးက ကွာခြားနေပါတယ်။ ဒီအချိန်မှာ ကျွန်တော်/ကျွန်မက လှပတဲ့ ကမ်းခြေတစ်ခုမှာ ထိုင်နေပါတယ်။ နေကာမျက်မှန်နဲ့ ဦးထုပ်ကို ဝတ်ဆင်ထားပါတယ်။ ကျွန်တော်/ကျွန်မ စာလေ့လာမနေပါဘူး၊ အနားယူနေပါတယ်။ အုန်းရည်လတ်လတ်ဆတ်ဆတ်ကို သောက်နေပြီး အပူပိုင်းဒေသသစ်သီးတွေကို စားနေပါတယ်။ ပင်လယ်လှိုင်းသံကို နားထောင်နေပါတယ်။ ကျွန်တော်/ကျွန်မရဲ့ အားလပ်ရက်ခရီးစဉ်ကို အရမ်းပျော်ရွှင်နေပါတယ်။