# I am doing/going to do an exam



## Mayoide

Hola.
Me gustaría saber si en estos casos se pueden utilizar el presente continuo y el going to indistintamente, o sólo es posible el presente continuo.

- I am doing an exam tomorrow.
- I am going to do an exam tomorrow.

- I am having an exam tomorrow.
- I am going to have an exam tomorrow.

Gracias.


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## Chris K

Yo diría "I am going to have an exam tomorrow" o (lo que es más idiomático) "I have an exam tomorrow / I've got an exam tomorrow."


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## Mayoide

Gracias Chris. ¿Y en el caso de los ejemplos de arriba con _do?_


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## Chris K

Mayoide said:


> Gracias Chris. ¿Y en el caso de los ejemplos de arriba con _do?_



No son idiomáticos. Es "have a test" o "take a test."


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## Mayoide

En ese caso ¿se diría _I am taking a test tomorrow_ o _I am going to take a test tomorrow_? ¿O ambas serían posibles?
Thanks.


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## Chris K

Mayoide said:


> En ese caso ¿se diría _I am taking a test tomorrow_ o _I am going to take a test tomorrow_? ¿O ambas serían posibles?
> Thanks.



Ambas, sí.


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## Mayoide

¿Y habría alguna diferencia entre ellas?


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## Borges

All of your original statements are fine.  The use of the verb "do" as Chris K mentioned sounds a bit strange.  More normal is "take a test" or "have a test".


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## gengo

Borges said:


> All of your original statements are fine.



Really?  The first three sound unnatural to me, and only the fourth sounds good.  I agree with what Chris has said.  And test is more commonly used than exam, although both are in use.  And if it is the final exam of the class, we say just "final."


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## Borges

Yes.  Really.  They are all grammatically correct.  If a student in my university town said to another, "I'm doing an exam tomorrow." I doubt they wouldn't be understood or that
the phrase would elicit a comment.


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## James2000

In these parts we also say:

I am _writing_ an exam tomorrow.

I'm not sure how widespread that is in other countries though.


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## gengo

Borges said:


> Yes.  Really.  They are all grammatically correct.  If a student in my university town said to another, "I'm doing an exam tomorrow." I doubt they wouldn't be understood or that the phrase would elicit a comment.



Nobody has said that they are grammatically incorrect, or that they are unintelligible.  My reply was to your statement that "All of your original statements are fine."  They (three of them) do not sound fine to me, and I don't think very many native speakers of AmEn would ever say them, especially the ones with "do."

Strangely, the third one would sound fine to me in the first-person plural ("*We*'re having an exam tomorrow"), but not in the singular.


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## Borges

I guess we have a misunderstanding about "fine".  Yes maybe they fail a "nuances test" of what we might expect from a native speaker but I personally didn't find them
jarring or shocking or in need of correction.....


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## luo.mai

I'm with gengo and Chris K in that "I'm going to do an exam" is incorrect (unless one is, say, a medical doctor going to perform an examination of a patient).

For a student going to take a test, the verb "do" would be misused. We should say "I'm going to _take_ an exam," or "I have an exam tomorrow." (Or, apparently in South Africa, one can also say "I'm going to write an exam tomorrow".)


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## Borges

Incorrect????  Jesus. OK. Whatever.


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## luo.mai

Yes, misuse of a word is an error, as is improper syntax or whatever else. There's no need to take offense; we're here to help people improve.


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## Borges

OK.  Sorry for losing my composure a bit.  Look, it's not incorrect.  I was so irritated by this I contacted a colleague in the English Department of the large
state university that I work at.  His reply:

     It's informal and colloquial, but hardly incorrect. I think you could "do" most anything... 

I asked another colleague in my own (scientific) department.  His reply was that if a student said it, he would interpret it as "taking" an exam, if a colleague or
a teaching assistant said it, he would interpret it to mean "giving" an exam. 

Again, I agree it is not the usual idiomatic construction but it is correct grammatically and is easily understood.  Telling someone that it is "incorrect" is doing them
a disservice.


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## gengo

Borges, I agree with what your colleagues have said, including that there could be ambiguity in the meaning.  It's true that "to do" is an incredibly versatile verb in English, and we can "do" almost anything.  However, for the purposes of this thread, I think it is rather misleading to tell the OP that "do" is acceptable here, because the vast majority of the time we would not use that verb in this context.  That is what Luo.mai meant about helping people improve.  We native speakers understand this usage of "do," but it would be confusing at best to tell a learner of English that "do" "sounds fine" in the examples given in post #1.


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## Borges

OK.  We'll just have to agree to disagree.


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## Spug

gengo said:


> ...owever, for the purposes of this thread, I think it is rather misleading to tell the OP that "do" is acceptable here, because the vast majority of the time we would not use that verb in this context.  That is what Luo.mai meant about helping people improve.  We native speakers understand this usage of "do," but it would be confusing at best to tell a learner of English that "do" "sounds fine" in the examples given in post #1.




I agree with this wholeheartedly. We don't "do" exams in American English. If we're students, we take exams. If we're faculty, we give exams. I cannot imagine a native American speaker who is a college student facing finals saying "Tomorrow I have to do an exam." Borges, you're really splitting hairs—and speaking of disservices, it's a disservice to Spanish speakers trying to learn American English to suggest that we "do' exams in this country.


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## Borges

Dear Spug,

What else can I do here?  I sent a reply from a professor of English Literature and I gave the opinions of 2 other American university professors (myself being one of them).  I never
said that a native American speaker would normally say such a thing.  Perhaps I'm splitting hairs but you are actually being dishonest when you ascribe such an opinion to me.  Who is doing a disservice to whom, I left at the gentlemanly "agree to disagree).  Apparently, that is not good enough for you.


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## Camparta

I think the issue here is related to "have an exam". We spanish usually say "tengo un examen" (I have a test). We don't say "hacer un examen" so often. So Mayoide was trying to translate "tengo un examen" with "I'm having an exam tomorrow". And that could be grammatically correct (I'm not sure though), but it's not common or even not used in America or UK.


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## Borges

Please see this old thread:

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1432172

Please see this answer from the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/youmeus/learnit/learnitv2.shtml

Better yet, just put into Google "do an exam"  and peruse some of the 322,000 usages of this.


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## gengo

Borges said:


> Please see this old thread:
> 
> http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1432172
> 
> Please see this answer from the BBC:
> 
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/youmeus/learnit/learnitv2.shtml



I'm not sure why you are citing those, because they both pertain to British English, and I'm pretty sure that everyone here has been referring to American English.  Furthermore, the second site is referring to a question about whether to say "make an exam" or "do an exam," and given only those two choices, even I would choose the latter.

In sum, in the US we take or have a test/exam, and in the UK it seems (I'm not sure) that they do an exam.


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## The Prof

This particular Brit would use "have" in this sentence, but in the simple present tense (as already proposed by several foreros): _I have an exam tomorrow. 

_Or I might use a version that will probably not go down well with many:  _I've got an exam tomorrow._


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## ogeido

What about " sit an exam" ? Maybe this is not too common but I've seen it many times. 

As regards " to do an exam" I think the idea of "do" being used in this context has been adopted or rather learned by many native speakers of Spanish due to several dictionaries in which it's stated that " to do an exam/ test" is totally acceptable. ( with no specification whether it is either american or british usage)


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## gengo

ogeido said:


> What about " sit an exam" ?



I have heard "sit *for* an exam," but not without the "for."

By the way, why do Spanish speakers so often put a space before a question mark?


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## ogeido

I've seen it written with and without "for", maybe "sit an exam" is a misuse according to what you say. As to the question mark , I think it's just a bad habit while typing , personally , I don't pay too much attention to it when posting sometimes but I must admit it's a mistake . I'm sorry .


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## Borges

I don't think that the original poster said anything about strictly using only American English.  That seems to be a bit of a backpedaling provincial stance by those saying words
like "incorrect".  Do you all think that a Spainard is super concerned whether a usage is American or British???


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## gengo

Borges said:


> I don't think that the original poster said anything about strictly using only American English.  That seems to be a bit of a backpedaling provincial stance by those saying words like "incorrect".  Do you all think that a Spainard is super concerned whether a usage is American or British???



Your question is a valid one, but consider this.  Most of us only know the language of our native country, so we can't really comment much on what is said elsewhere.  If that prevented us from making confident statements about correctness, there would be few posts on this forum.  Sometimes we say something, only to learn that that is not true in another country.  That has happened to me many times here, and I learn interesting things from the experience.  

However, if I ask a question about whether something is correct in Spanish, I see nothing wrong with someone telling me "No, no es correcto," even though that may only apply to their own country.  That is all they can say, after all.  If it is correct somewhere else, I hope a person from that country will say so.

That said, El Profe has told us that at least he (a Brit) agrees with the rest of us Americans on this one.  Hardly conclusive, but a data point nonetheless.


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## Borges

In the old thread I gave, a Brit said that his preferred verb was "to do".  If I found say 10 more examples on the internet of Brits using "to do", would you admit defeat?  

I didn't think so.   Anyway, I think I'm done with this thread.


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## gengo

Borges said:


> In the old thread I gave, a Brit said that his preferred verb was "to do".  If I found say 10 more examples on the internet of Brits using "to do", would you admit defeat?



This isn't a contest, so no defeat is possible on either side, but please see post #24, in which I specifically mention that "to do an exam" _seems _to be acceptable in British English.

You are taking this waaaay too personally.  We're just trying to help the original poster.


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