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Shall I say

Every year I am going to France for my holidays.

or

Every year I go to France for my holidays

Are both acceptable? As it is for holidays it is a temporary action (progressive) but it is also a repeated actions. It happens every year. (present)

2 Answers 2

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In general, the simple present emphasizes the habit; the present progressive emphasizes the present moment. These sentence pairs are both equally acceptable, but can have slightly different meanings:

That team misses a lot of free throws. (simple present)

The team has a habit of missing free throws, but they may not be doing so right now. In fact, the team may not even be playing right now.

That team is missing a lot of free throws. (present progressive)

We are watching a game right now, and the team has missed many free throws.

Here is another example:

I am travelling to France every week on business.

This emphasizes that my life, right now, has a lot of business travel.

I travel to France every week on business.

I am in the habit of travelling to France. The reader might infer that it is affecting me right now, but I don't explicitly say so.

With that in mind, "Every year I am going to France for my holidays" sounds awkward because something that happens only once per year doesn't seem relevant to the present moment. So the simple present is a better choice for you.

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"Every year I am going to France" is not grammatically incorrect, but is awkward. If you re-ordered the words to "I am going to France every year" it would be a perfectly good sentence.

"I am going to France every year" and "I go to France every year" mean pretty much the same thing in practice. In either case, it is a present, on-going activity.

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