Learn English – “I teach” vs. “I’m teaching” — which one is proper in this situation

grammaticalitypresent-tenseprogressive-aspectverbs

Following situation occurs/ed. I meet a friend for a coffee. We chat and I ask him what he's doing for work now.

His answer: "I'm teaching English."

This irks me. Because in that situation he's not teaching right that moment, but rather he teaches English. So shouldn't his answer rather be "I teach English."?

English is not my mother tongue but I do think I'm fluent in it. I grew up bilingual.

Best Answer

Q: What are you doing at the moment?

A: I'm teaching English at a language school.

Does this mean the person is teaching at the moment of speaking. No, it doesn't. We use the present continuous tense to talk about things that are in progress or for actions that are, for the time being, temporary in nature. The fact your friend replied using the present continuous means he does not consider teaching to be his permanent job, it is a stopover, something he is doing now, for a limited period. Of course, he could always change his mind and become a full-time fully fledged teacher, but his answer was grammatical and perfectly acceptable.

Wikipedia

The present continuous is used in several instances.

  • To describe something which is happening at the exact moment of speech:
    The boy is crying.

  • To describe an action that is taking place now, but not at the exact moment of speech:
    He is working in Dubai.

  • To describe an event which is planned in the future:
    I'm resitting my French exam on Tuesday.

  • With always, but meaning often:
    My mother is always making me go to school!
    She is always playing with that doll!

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