Teaching Gerunds and Infinitives: 7 Proven ESL Tips

Ask a class of intermediate learners to finish the sentence “I enjoy ___ ,” and roughly half will write “I enjoy to swim.” The error is predictable, it survives years of instruction, and it shows up in IELTS essays written by students who otherwise handle the present perfect without blinking. Gerunds and infinitives are one of the last grammar points to stick because the choice rarely follows a logic students can reason their way to — it depends on the verb in front of them. This guide breaks down what actually works in the classroom: which verbs to front-load, how to handle the meaning-change verbs that trip up even advanced learners, and seven teaching moves that get the pattern into students’ automatic speech.

What Are Gerunds and Infinitives?

A gerund is a verb form ending in -ing that works as a noun: Swimming is good exercise. An infinitive is the base verb with 에게 in front, and it can also act like a noun: To swim is good exercise. Both do the same grammatical job — they turn an action into a thing you can talk about — which is exactly why students assume the two are interchangeable. They are not. English attaches strong preferences to individual verbs, and those preferences are the whole ballgame.

Here is the distinction that matters for teaching: a gerund tends to describe an action that is real, ongoing, or already happening, while an infinitive leans toward something potential, future, or a goal. I stopped smoking means the smoking was real and I ended it. I stopped to smoke means I paused in order to have a cigarette — the smoking is the purpose. Students who internalize this “real vs. intended” feel make far better guesses than students who memorize lists cold.

Why Students Struggle with Gerunds and Infinitives

Most first languages do not carve up verb complements the way English does. A Mandarin, Japanese, or Spanish speaker has no equivalent rule telling them that 즐기다 demands -ing while want demands 에게. So they fall back on translation, and translation gives them a coin flip. The result is fossilized errors — “I look forward to meet you,” “She avoided to answer” — that persist because they rarely block communication. Nobody misunderstands “I enjoy to cook,” so nobody corrects it, and it hardens.

The second problem is that textbooks often dump a 40-verb list on students in one lesson and call it a day. That is a memory test, not teaching. The verbs that actually appear in daily speech — want, need, enjoy, like, stop, start, decide, try — number maybe fifteen. Teach those to automaticity first, and the long tail can wait.

Verbs Followed by a Gerund

When one of these verbs comes first, the verb after it takes -ing. The most useful cluster to drill early: enjoy, avoid, finish, mind, suggest, consider, practice, imagine, admit, deny, keep, miss. A memory hook that works with teenagers and adults alike: most of these describe something you are already doing or have done, not something you plan to do.

• 그녀 enjoys 가르침 beginners.
• He avoided answering the question.
• Would you mind closing the window?
• They finished grading the exams.

There is one rule in this whole topic that never breaks, and it is worth its own lesson: after a preposition, always use a gerund. Good at cooking, interested in learning, tired of waiting, before leaving. No exceptions. Students who lock this down stop making half their gerund errors overnight, because so many mistakes come from an infinitive sneaking in after words like 에게 (the preposition) in look forward to 그리고 be used to.

Verbs Followed by an Infinitive

These verbs push the following verb into the 에게 + base form: want, need, decide, hope, plan, promise, agree, offer, refuse, learn, expect, would like, manage. The through-line here is intention or future orientation — you want to do something you have not done yet, you plan to, you promise to.

• I want to improve my pronunciation.
• We decided to change the syllabus.
• 그녀 promised to send the feedback.
• He refused to apologize.

A quick side note that saves confusion later: after modal verbs (can, should, must) and after make 그리고 let, English drops the 에게 entirely — She made me repeat it, not made me to repeat. If your students are also wrestling with modals, it is worth pairing this lesson with a review of how to teach modal verbs so the two patterns reinforce each other instead of competing.

Verbs That Take Both — With a Change in Meaning

This is where gerunds and infinitives get genuinely interesting, and where a good lesson earns its keep. A handful of high-frequency verbs accept either form, but the meaning shifts. Teach these as paired sentences, never in isolation — the contrast is the lesson.

그만큼 remember/forget pair is the one students use most, so I spend the most time there. A simple board contrast — “I remembered to lock the door” (I did it) vs. “I remember locking the door” (I recall doing it) — followed by a quick round where students describe their own morning routine usually lands it. The pattern also rhymes nicely with the future-vs-real logic in teaching conditionals, which is a helpful callback if your class has covered that first.

How to Teach Gerunds and Infinitives: 7 Proven Tips

Rules explained on a whiteboard will not survive contact with real speech. These seven moves shift the pattern from something students think about to something they produce automatically.

1. Teach them as noun-replacements first. Before any verb list, show that -ing 그리고 to + verb are just ways to make an action into a noun. Reading helps. To read helps. Once students see the job these forms do, the verb-specific rules feel less arbitrary.

2. Front-load the fifteen verbs that matter. Skip the exhaustive list. Drill want, need, enjoy, like, hope, plan, decide, avoid, finish, mind, suggest, promise, agree, learn, try until they are automatic. The rare verbs can be taught reactively when they surface in reading.

3. Anchor gerund verbs to a feeling, not a rule. “Gerund verbs usually describe something already real or happening.” Enjoy, avoid, finish, keep, mind all pass this test. A feel-based heuristic beats a memorized list because students can extend it to new verbs.

4. Teach the preposition rule as an absolute. After any preposition, the verb takes -ing — no exceptions. This single rule eliminates a huge share of errors, especially the look forward to meeting trap where 에게 is a preposition, not part of an infinitive.

5. Present meaning-change verbs in pairs. Never teach stop, remember, forget, or try with only one form. Put both sentences side by side and have students spot the difference themselves. The contrast is the content.

6. Drill through speaking, not gap-fills. Gap-fill worksheets test recognition; speaking builds production. Use rapid-fire prompts — “Something you enjoy?” “Something you want to do this year?” — so the correct form comes out under mild time pressure. That is where fossilized errors get overwritten.

7. Correct by reformulation, not rule-recitation. When a student says “I avoid to eat late,” don’t launch into a grammar explanation mid-conversation. Simply echo back “You avoid eating late?” and move on. The recast plants the correct form without breaking the flow. For a deeper look at how recasts fit into a lesson, the mechanics overlap with what makes teaching the passive voice stick — targeted, low-interruption correction.

Common Mistakes and How to Correct Them

Three errors account for most of what you will hear. The first is the classic “I enjoy to…” — a gerund verb given an infinitive. The fix is repetition, not explanation; students already “know” the rule but haven’t automated it. The second is the preposition trap: “I’m interested in to learn Spanish.” Point back to the absolute rule — after in, it must be learning. The third is the look forward to 그리고 be used to confusion, where the 에게 is a preposition and therefore demands a gerund: looking forward to seeing you, not to see you.

One correction philosophy worth adopting: prioritize errors on the fifteen core verbs and let the rare-verb slips go for now. A student who nails want, enjoy, decide, 그리고 avoid in speech is functionally fluent on this point, even if they occasionally miss tolerate 또는 contemplate. Chasing perfection on low-frequency verbs burns class time for little communicative payoff.

Classroom Activities That Build Automaticity

The best gerund and infinitive practice is disguised speaking. A few reliable formats: Find Someone Who (“…enjoys cooking,” “…wants to travel this year”) forces the target forms across a dozen mini-conversations. Two truths and a lie using I’ve decided to…, I’ve finished…, I keep… gives production a reason to be accurate. For a written anchor, a short paragraph about weekend plans naturally pulls in want to, hope to, plan to, 그리고 enjoy + -ing.

Watch a focused grammar video together as a warm-up or review — students benefit from hearing the meaning-change pairs spoken aloud with intonation, which a worksheet can’t deliver.

자주 묻는 질문

Is it “start doing” or “start to do”? Both are correct, and the meaning barely changes — start, begin, 그리고 continue accept either form with no real difference. Tell students not to overthink this one; either answer is right.

Why is it “look forward to seeing,” not “to see”? Because the 에게 in look forward to is a preposition, not part of an infinitive. Prepositions are always followed by a gerund. Same logic applies to be used to 그리고 object to.

Which should I teach first, gerunds or infinitives? Teach the gerund-only and infinitive-only lists together, side by side, so students compare from day one. Teaching them weeks apart makes the two blur together later.

At what level should students learn this? Introduce the core verbs at high-elementary (A2), then revisit the meaning-change verbs at intermediate (B1–B2), when students have enough context to appreciate the stop smoking vs. stop to smoke distinction.

The Takeaway for Teachers

Stop teaching gerunds and infinitives as a rule to be understood and start teaching them as a habit to be built. The students who master this point are not the ones who memorized the longest verb list — they’re the ones who produced want to, enjoy + -ing, 그리고 remember to often enough that the wrong form started to sound wrong. Pick your fifteen verbs, drill them through speech, teach the meaning-change pairs in matched sets, and correct by recasting rather than lecturing. Next lesson, keep the pattern alive by folding a couple of target verbs into whatever you’re teaching, whether that’s a review of modal verbs or a fresh speaking task.

출처

1. British Council LearnEnglish — Verbs Followed by ‘-ing’ or Infinitive — reference lists of gerund and infinitive verbs with example sentences.
2. Cambridge Dictionary Grammar — Verbs: Infinitives or -ing Forms — meaning-change verbs and preposition-plus-gerund rules.
3. Purdue OWL — Gerunds, Participles, and Infinitives — grammatical roles of gerunds and infinitives explained for writing instruction.

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