Ongoing actions

When you want to express that a particular action or state is ongoing or continuous, there are a couple of different ways you can go about it.

The simplest way is to use 在, our location marker from earlier.

他在玩手机

He is playing on his phone.

我们在学习

We are studying.

You can turn this into 正在 to stress the fact that the action is ongoing at that exact moment.

我正在洗衣服

I’m washing clothes right now.

An alternate way to stress the immediacy is to add 现在.

够现在在喝水

The dog is drinking water right now.