Australia Network Study English Series 1 Episode 21 "Watching Birds"

Hello, I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.
Today we’re going to look at the continuous tense, and then we’re going to practice some sentence stress.
Our clip today is of a birdwatcher named Margaret. A birdwatcher is someone who loves watching and listening to birds.
Let’s start by listening to Margaret talk about watching birds.

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Some people think it's a bit of a strange pleasure, but you know, it's always interesting. It's interesting to see what they're doing. You know, we saw them sheltering under the banks as we came round and so on, and they have to live in it, so why shouldn't we?
What I'm doing is looking to see what's outside this hide because I'm doing a sheet for the 'Bird Atlas' of a radius of 500 metres from here to see all the species that are in it.
I use my binoculars and I'm using a telescope, and I use my ears because I was recording birds by call as I walked down the track here – wrens and little grass birds and stuff. In fact, if you do a lot of bird watching in the bush, you do a lot by call.
A day like today's not much good, but normally you do a lot by call, and the idea is to make sure you get all the species that are here in the area that you're surveying.
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Margaret is talking about the time she spends watching birds.
When describing actions that happen for a continuous period of time, we need to use a continuous tense. In English, there are several continuous tenses.
Continuous tenses are formed by using the verb ‘to be’ plus the present participle, the ‘ing’ form of the verb.
Today we’re going to look at the present and past continuous tenses.
Let’s begin with the present continuous tense.
The present continuous tense describes things that are in progress.
Listen to Margaret again and see if you can hear some examples of the present continuous tense.

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What I'm doing is looking to see what's outside this hide because I'm doing a sheet for the 'Bird Atlas' of a radius of 500 metres from here to see all the species that are in it. I use my binoculars and I'm using a telescope.
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Margaret uses the phrases ‘I’m doing’ and ‘I’m using’ to describe things that are happening now.
We can use the present continuous tense in 3 ways.
Firstly, we use it to describe actions that are happening now.
For example, Margaret says, “I’m using a telescope”.
We also use this tense to refer to actions that are happening soon. This is the future aspect.
Thirdly, the continuous tense can describe actions that are happening simultaneously, or at the same time.
In this case, the continuous tense follows the words ‘when’, ‘while’ or ‘as’.
Listen to the following sentences and see if you can identify which of these three rules is being used.
“I’m going bird watching today. What are you doing?”
This is an example of ‘rule 2’. Here, we use the present continuous tense to talk about things that are happening soon.
“The birds are singing while they are flying.”
This is an example of rule 3, because we are describing two things that are happening at the same time – ‘singing’ and ‘flying’.
It’s a good idea to practice recognising these.
But now, let’s take a look at the past continuous tense.

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And I use my ears because I was recording birds by call as I walked down the track here – wrens and little grass birds and stuff. In fact, if you do a lot of bird watching in the bush, you do a lot by call.