SHOULD BE + verb ING ‘She should be looking for a job’ – English Grammar Profiler

Let’s look at an example of ‘should be ing‘ in student writing:

In Korea, it is so common that women should be looking for a job after divorce.

PELIC Korean female level 4 writing.

‘Should’ can express obligation or expectation. ‘Should’ can be used with a continuous form:

Should be + lookING

In the English Grammar Profile at B2, there are 3 points covering ‘should + continuous form’. Points 141 (general), 164, and 177 in Modality are used for either obligation or expectation.

A search for should be _v?g* in the iWeb corpus finds the following present participles:

1 SHOULD BE DOING 24974

Further collocates 4 left and right:

1 WHAT (DDQ ) 7756

2 SOMETHING (PN1 ) 1554

3 THINGS (NN2 ) 1303

4 THING (NN1 ) 600