Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

eagleflych · Joined: 24 Oct 2007 Posts: 14

Hi, everybody:

I have seen the sentence "Let's go out now. It isn't raining any more. " in an essay.

And I know that the Present Continuous Tense has the meaning "temporary" (please look over the webpage http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/tenseprescont.htm ), so the sentence "It isn't raining any more. " contains the meaning---"not raining" will ends soon and it will rain again soon?

Thanks a lot in advance.

Lorikeet · Joined: 08 Oct 2005 Posts: 1877 Location: San Francisco

If you look at the website you mentioned, it says at first:

"When we talk about events that are actually happening now, we use the present continuous tense"

I think this works just fine for the sentence you mentioned. "It isn't raining anymore." means "It's not raining now."

There are different uses of the present continuous, and that website mentions "It is also used to describe trends or situations that are happening but may be temporary."

It does not say all present continuous fit the "temporary" meaning.

grammy · Joined: 13 Feb 2009 Posts: 11

this is a bit difficult.

really really...and probalby your teacher will disagree with me, but trust me on this, the choice of tense all depends on how you, the speaker, see and feel about the situation or events. continuous forms are usually used for what we feel to be longer, unfinished or ongoing actions, but what is a longer ongoing or unfinished action is your own decision...

my advice, don't worry about it too much, just keep speaking and in the end you will get a feel for it.

but , it is really helpgful to compare past simple with past continuous.

dragn · Joined: 17 Feb 2009 Posts: 450

Notice also in the sentence "It isn't raining anymore" that the meaning is affected by the time expression "anymore." This suggests that it is indeed finished raining, and doesn't lead us to expect any more rain any time soon.

However, compare: "It isn't raining at the moment."

"At the moment" tends to emphasize the temporary nature of the condition, and would probably influence me to bring my umbrella.

Thus, the present continuous verb tense is not the only thing at work here.