General chit chat + small grammar point

Hi,

I just returned home after a busy day. Well, it wasn't actually that busy. I moved a lot but I didn't really get anything done. Still I thought it was a pretty decent day. Here's one good thing that happened today: my summer plans got crystallized. The way it looks like right now is that I'll be teaching a course for third-year high school students (abikurssi) for EF (Education First, maybe you've heard of it) in June. The really good news is that the course will be held in Oxford. Yippee. Maybe some of you could join in as well? Feel like hanging out in Oxford? I'm not trying to be an advertiser for EF or anything, but if you're doing the matriculation exam in Autumn, why not look into it? Anyway, then in July I'll be teaching English courses 4 and 5 at a summer high school in Siikaranta. Those you've probably done already, right? In August, I'll be participating in a course myself which is to be held in Cambridge. The title of the course is "Creativity in the English Language Classroom", so when I come back I'll be creative as hell. Hopefully.

I read your movie reviews by the way. I liked them. Some of you had really put some effort into them. You're not going to get them back before next week though: I am still unsure whether I should grade them or not. I'll get back to you on that. Here's one grammar thing that struck me: some of you use the so-called 'present continuous' a little too much. Do you know what that is? Here are some examples.

The chicken is crossing the road.
Taneli is teaching English.
Ilona is reading a book.

Notice the present continuous form which is in italics. Now contrast these sentences with the so-called 'present simple' forms, as in these sentences.

The chicken crosses the road.
Taneli teaches English.
Ilona reads a book.

All six sentences have present timeframe, so in other words they happen in the present. The first three are very different from the others, though. When you think about it, the ones with 'present simple' forms (last three) depict habitual events: we could add expressions like 'every Monday' or 'always' into them, which is something we couldn't do for the first three. Taneli teaches English means that Taneli teaches English for a living: that is what he does every day. Taneli is teaching English means that that is what he is doing right now as we speak. Okay why am I raving on about this? This is simple stuff, right? Well yes, but I think we Finns have a tendency to overuse the 'present continuous' forms for some reason and put them in places where the action is NOT happening right now. Remember that this is usually wrong. There are cases where it is possible, but they're rare. This is why we can't say Bob Murray is playing an aging actor in the movie because he does it throughout the movie: the 'present continuous' would be weird in this context.

But yeah like I said before, you guys totally murdered the film. Was it really that bad? Because I have to say, I quite enjoyed it. It may be because I'm so old already, but that finding your purpose in life stuff really gets to me.