Tag Archives: gerund

A word on Grammar : -ing Forms

If you are one of my students in the first course, you know I’m not exaggerating the slightest bit (well, maybe the “burping”  thing is too much)  when I say I’m going to wallpaper the classroon with this funny cartoon I came across on  Pinterest.

The moment I read it I realized it was perfect to teach my youngest students the -ing form because it is something they can easily relate with and have fun. Now, I’m not saying they are wild, for goodness sake, I’m just saying some of them need to learn how to behave in a classroom as,now and then, they fail to see the difference between  the classroom and  the schoolyard, lesson time and  break time .

This is the cartoon and these are Mrs Mutner’s rules( from now on, mine too). Easy to see its potential when trying to explain the formation of the -ing  form, although I’m going to use it to go over the rules I have already explained.

My idea is reading Mrs. Mutner’s  rules with them, clarifying meanings  and then asking students to volunteer to write the rules for the formation of the gerund on the board. Then, students will have to arrange the -ing forms under the right rule.

Some interactive exercises to practise : here and here

Infinitive and Gerund Transformations

I don’t really think I have ever studied lists of verbs followed by infinitive and/or gerund but I really don’t think I should be telling this to my students.

I always claim that English grammar is easy, especially when  compared to the Spanish grammar, but  it gets a bit messy when it comes to verbs  followed by infinitive or gerund.
You see, the easy thing to say is that some verbs are followed by infinitive (promise to go) and some verbs are followed by gerund (can’t stand ironing). But then we find that, some other verbs are followed by infinitive or gerund with no change of meaning (start to study/start studying)and some others are followed by infinitive and gerund with a change of meaning (stop to smoke/stop smoking) and if this were not enough, some verbs are followed by infinitive with to (offer to help) and some others by infinitive without to ( make me study). Some verbs are followed by gerund but if there is an object pronoun in between the verb and the gerund, then the gerund becomes infinitive (recommended reading / recommended her to read) … amazing, isn’t it?

Now, you can begin to  understand why I have never studied lists of verbs but relied on my intuition  when trying to decide on the right structure.

I hope these exercises will help my students.You are welcome to do them.

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