Learn Italian Present Continuous: “cosa stanno facendo?”

Italian for beginners: an original infographic to learn the present continuous in Italian by describing a scene of daily life.

Learning how to use Italian verbs in the present tense is one of a student’s first skills during an Italian language course. However, knowing how to describe an action while it is happening is even more helpful!

The Italian language, just like English, uses the present continuous, also known as present progressive, to perform this task. The Italian present continuous is a very simple tense to use, as it just requires the knowledge of the present tense of the verb stare and of the Italian gerund, which is a pretty straightforward verb mood.

Even if you are a beginner in the Italian language, I’m sure you already know the present tense of stare. If you don’t yet, well, I’m here to help:

In order to form the present progressive in Italian, you will need to add to the present of stare the gerund of the verb that is actually expressing the action you want to describe.

The gerund is a verb mood that ends in –ando (for Italian verbs that have their infinitive form in –are), or –endo (when a verb is in –ere or –ire), very much like the English –ing desinence. Here follows an example:

But let’s see how to use the Italian present progressive and practice! Below you will find an image representing a scene from everyday life: we have described all the actions in the image using the Italian present continuous. Try to do the same thing yourself by searching for a photo on the web and… have fun learning Italian!