What Are You Doing?

SCENARIO

Imagine you have just met a relative, a friend or a work colleague. It could be any type of meeting (expected or unexpected). At some point during the meeting, the other person becomes curious about you are doing. The situation could be:

• He/ she does not know what you are doing and wants to find out.
• He/ she knows what you are doing, but was expecting you to be doing something different.

Either way, he/ she wants to clarify the situation and decides to ask the question: "what are you doing?".

He/ she could choose to be a bit less formal and say:

¿Qué estás haciendo?

Alternatively, he/ she could choose to be a little bit more formal and say:

¿Qué está haciendo usted?

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OUR TIP

You DO NOT need be concerned about the degree of formality in the question you are asked. Whether the other person uses the more/ less formal question is irrelevant to your choice of answer. Your answer depends only on what you want to say. There are many different ways in which you could state what you are doing. Perhaps you want to choose between saying that you are:

• Working
• Reading a book
• Writing a letter
• Watching TV
• Listening to the radio
• Doing a crossword
• Making the bed
• Doing nothing

Here are some examples which deal with those basic possibilities:

• Estoy trabajando (I am working)
• Estoy leyendo un libro (I am reading a book).
• Estoy escribiendo una carta (I am writing a letter)
• Estoy mirando la tele (I am watching TV)
• Estoy escuchando la radio (I am listening to the radio)
• Estoy haciendo un crucigrama (I am doing a crossword)
• Estoy haciendo la cama (I am making the bed)
• No estoy haciendo nada (I am doing nothing)

Now you should practice answering the question:

¿Qué estás haciendo?

This is another Free online Spanish lesson from Love-Spanish.com. We conduct lessons online on this and many other topics using the latest video conferencing facilities. Online lessons are the ideal way to improve listening and speaking skills. For more details on our lessons online and how to book them, please visit:

Love-Spanish.com/ Lessons-Online

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