Present Continuous

Well, not really. It is a little tricky. The meaning with 고 is that you are in the process of doing it, but not completed.  However, without the 고 it means that you are in the state of.

For example, 않다. 앉고 있어요 means that you are in the process of sitting, you were in a standing position and now you are moving to a sitting position, and have not yet reached that position. On the other hand, 앉아 있어요 means that you are in the state of sitting, and 앉아요 carries the same meaning.

 This is my understanding of the grammar, but I am not a native speaker of Korean, so I may be wrong.

Lee Lalka

이신한

李新韓

I'm no expert on Korean but I do believe that one of the problems with present continuous in Korean is the same as it is for a native English speaker in many languages. Most of the world's languages, at least according to the little typology I know, are perfectly happy to use simple present tense for things that one is doing RIGHT NOW, whereas, generally in English we reserve simple present for things we do habitually. So while verb stem+고있다 can be translated as '(I am) verb stem+ing' it has a stronger meaning of 'in the middle of the process of V+ing and not done V+ing'. In many cases it's OK to just use simple present tense. Just think about how often English learners say 'I V right now' when they should say 'I'm Ving right now'. Hope that helps.

the 고 is the "ing" form. Lee was kind of correct with sitting, which you don't really use 고 with and is more, "앉아 있어요" which, depending on context and tone is "i'm sitting down" or "(you) sit down" or "(you) stay sitting". However, you don't really say "i'm in the process of sitting down" although it is grammatically correct, you only say "i'm in the process of doing something" if it's a bit time consuing.. like, a longer action.  but yeah, 고 is the "ing".

so.. 

먹고있어요 - 'eating' -- this is like "I'm eating" or "먹고있어 (you) stay eating", but '먹어' is used as 'eating' between friends or to people lower..but i guess you're probably using this more to teach english so that doesn't matter as much?..

저는 김치를 먹고있어요. - 'I am eating kimchi.' or it COULD mean 'i'm continually eating kimchi'. as in, i have been and am, for a week or a month or something. kind of like "i've been eating kimchi". f you want to specify "right now" you can say '지금'.

aside from this...

 한다 is "doing"

"하는 중이다"  is kind of "in the middle/process of doing something"

so you can us that as in "요리하는 중이다" which is "i'm in the process of cooking"

 but you can say "요리를 하고 있다"