what do you do vs what are you doing

I meet a lot of people on chat rooms when surfing the net. observe that most of them make a big common mistake. Those learners of English find a difficulty in differentiating between ´what do you do? ´ And ´what are you doing? ´. if you focus on the verb to do in both of the two questions, you will see that in the first one it is conjugated in the present tense, that is used when you talk about a habit or an unchanged fact like I wake up everyday at 6 o'clock, and the earth is oval, respectively. Whereas the second one is conjugated in the present progressive tense , that is used when talking about an activity you have just started doing but still in progress like I'm reading right now, for instance. So, now as it becomes clear for you, dear reader, where we use each one of them, their meanings become easy to get. The first one is used to ask someone for their job, whereas the second is used to ask them for their activity in the moment you are talking to them
written by: fugifelon