Gerunds and infinitives I. Gerund Preposition + gerund bored with, fond of, look forward to, get used to, insist on I’m bored with waiting. Mike insisted on buying her a drink. Gerund as the subject of the sentence Learning English is fun! Common phrases + gerund It’s (not) worth... This book is worth reading. It’s no good... It is no good trying to apologize. There’s no point... There’s no point carrying on with this. Verb + gerund liking and disliking enjoy, dislike, hate phrasal verbs go on, give up, put off some phrases with can’t can’t help, can’t stand other verbs avoid, delay, finish, keep, risk, suggest go + sports or leisure activities go skiing, go dancing, go shopping II. Infinitive Adjective + infinitive Your writing is difficult to read. It’s lovely to see you again. Infinitive of purpose I’m calling to find out if you stock spare parts. Verb + infinitive plans and decisions aim, arrange, choose, decide, plan, prepare expectations demand, expect, hope, want, wish, would like promises and refusals fail, guarantee, offer, promise, refuse other verbs agree, learn, manage, seem, tend Verb + object + infinitive advise, allow, help, remind, teach, use Noun + infinitive attempt, effort, opportunity, way It was good opportunity to work and travel. This is an easy way to stop smoking. III. Gerund or infinitive: no change in meaning begin, bother, continue, intend, start It was starting to get dark. IV. Gerund or infinitive: change in meaning forget, stop, regret, remember, try I definitely remember posting the letter. X I must remember to post the letter. I’ll never forget flying to Mexico. X Sorry, I forgot to turn off the lights. I regret spending all the money. I’ve got none left. X I regret to inform you that we... I tried clicking on the box, but it doesn’t work. X I’m trying to run this computer program. We stopped buying from that supplier. X I stopped to buy something for my wife. Gerunds and infinitives 1 Complete the mini-dialogue by putting the verbs in brackets into the correct form, using gerund or infinitive. ISABEL: Oh, no, not again. FERNANDA: What's wrong? ISABEL: My computer's crashed. It keeps (1) __________ (do) it. I have to save my documents every few minutes or I risk (2) __________ (lose) all the work I've just done. FERNANDA: Have you got enough disk space? ISABEL: Yeah, I have. I really don't know what's causing it (3) __________ (crash) so often. Look, you're good at computers. What do you advise me (4) __________ (do)? FERNANDA: Well, I don't know. I haven't been trained (5) __________ (fix) them. You'll have to ask an IT technician (6) __________ (come) and have a look at it. ISABEL: Hah. You know, there's no point (7) __________ (call) a technician - they'll be ages and I ... I really can't afford (8) __________ (wait) all day for someone to come, I'm really busy. FERNANDA: Why don't you phone the helpdesk then? They'll advise you what (9) __________ (do) over the phone. ISABEL: Oh, yeah. I suppose so. FERNANDA: And if you're really that busy, have you considered (10) __________ (ask) Sophie to help you, she hasn't got a lot of work at the moment. ISABEL: Oh, hasn't she? That's great. I'll ask her (11) __________ (type) up this report. Thanks. 2 Complete this letter by putting the verbs in brackets into the correct form. Dear Audio World, I am writing (1) __________ (complain) about the poor service that I received when I was in your store last week. Recently you decided (2) __________ (remove) listening facilities in your stores, and your sales staff encouraged customers (3) __________ (take) home their choice of CDs without (4) __________ (hear) them first. You invited us (5)__________ (return) any CDs that we did not like, as long as we kept the receipt as proof of purchase. In my opinion this was an excellent policy as it allowed customers (6) __________ (risk) (7) __________ (buy) things that were a little different. A consequence of your policy is that customers will buy more CDs, and this means (8) ________ (return) more that they don't like. In fact last week I brought back eight CDs, from the fourteen I had bought on the previous visit. Your salesman refused (9) _________ (accept) such a large number, and accused me of (10) ________ (take) the CDs home just (11) __________ (copy) them. I strongly objected to (12) __________ (be) treated like this as I had remembered (13) __________ (bring) the receipts with me and my actions were within the terms of your guarantee. I can't help (14) __________ (think) that you will lose a lot of business if your staff go on (15) __________ (behave) in this way, and I advise you (16) __________ (train) your staff (17) __________ (deal) with customers in a more polite manner. Yours sincerely, Ian Carr