What are the gerund vs infinitive rules?
The first verb selects the complement: enjoy + -ing, decide + to-infinitive, or tell + person + to-infinitive. Like, love, hate, start, and begin allow both forms.
- Enjoy, avoid, finish, suggest, mind, and keep + -ing.
- Decide, promise, offer, plan, want, and need + to-infinitive.
- Want, ask, and tell + person + to-infinitive.
B1 · Gerunds/Infinitives · 12 minThe first verb decides which form follows.
This B1 lesson sorts common verbs into -ing, to-infinitive, and object plus to-infinitive patterns, then applies them to planning and emails — free to try, with no signup.
- CEFR levelB1 · Intermediate
- Time to completeAbout 12 minutes
- Learning strategyLearn verb plus complement
- Blocks10 blocks
01 / 07
What are the gerund vs infinitive rules?
Whether a gerund or infinitive follows a verb is mainly determined by the first verb. After enjoy, say "I enjoy preparing presentations"; after decide, use "We decided to postpone the launch." Direct translation from German is unreliable because German uses its zu-infinitive after verbs much more widely. Learn more than the isolated words enjoy or decide. Store each one with a short pattern: enjoy doing and decide to do. At B1, three productive groups cover the core: verb + -ing, verb + to-infinitive, and verb + person + to-infinitive. A fourth small group with like, love, hate, start, and begin allows both forms without a real meaning change. The first verb is therefore your guide to the next form.
02 / 07
Which English verbs are followed by a gerund?
The common verbs enjoy, avoid, finish, suggest, mind, and keep are followed by an -ing form. Say "I enjoy preparing presentations," "She suggested moving the meeting," and "We finished checking the figures." The -ing form acts as the complement of the first verb here. A typical German transfer error is "I enjoy to prepare presentations." Correct it to "I enjoy preparing presentations." The same principle applies after suggest: not "She suggested to move the meeting," but "She suggested moving the meeting." With avoid, mind, and keep, learn a whole phrase such as avoid waiting, mind working, or keep trying. Create one personal example for every new verb. The dependable unit is not the verb alone but the verb together with its -ing complement.
03 / 07
Which verbs are followed by a to-infinitive?
The common verbs decide, promise, offer, plan, want, and need are followed by a to-infinitive. In planning, say "We decided to postpone the launch" or "We plan to review the figures." For a promise, use "I promised to call"; for an offer, use "She offered to help." The word to belongs to the complete infinitive in these examples and is not omitted. Again, learn fixed chunks: decide to do, promise to do, offer to do, and plan to do. This prevents mixed forms such as "We decided postponing" or "She promised calling." In connected speech, infinitival to is normally reduced to /tə/, as in "decided to postpone." It remains visible in writing while linking the two verbs lightly in speech.
04 / 07
How does verb + object + to-infinitive work?
In the verb + object + to-infinitive pattern, the person performing the second action stands between the two verbs. With ask and tell, say "We asked Maya to send the file" and "The manager told Ana to call the supplier." Want can follow the pattern too: "We want the team to finish today." The person is not an optional extra; it identifies who performs the second action. That is why "We asked to Maya send the file" has the wrong order. Build the structure in three parts: first verb, person, to-infinitive. In an email, the order helps with requests and tasks: "I asked Ben to update the slides." Before writing, check whether the first subject and the performer of the second action are the same person. When you name somebody else, this object pattern is often required.
05 / 07
Can a verb take both a gerund and an infinitive?
Like, love, hate, start, and begin can take an -ing form or a to-infinitive with no real meaning change. You can therefore say "We started working" or "We started to work." The same B1 group allows pairs such as "I like reading" and "I like to read." This flexibility does not extend automatically to every verb; enjoy, for example, stays with -ing, while decide stays with a to-infinitive. Learn the group as a limited exception to the fixed patterns.
06 / 07
Is it look forward to seeing or see?
Look forward to is followed by an -ing form because to is a preposition here, not an infinitive marker. The natural email phrase is "I look forward to hearing from you." The common error "I look forward to hear from you" appears because to looks like the beginning of an infinitive. Treat the whole expression look forward to as one unit; after its preposition, use hearing, seeing, or another -ing form. You can likewise write "We look forward to meeting you." Compare that with "We decided to meet you": after decide, to belongs to the infinitive, while after look forward to, it belongs to the fixed prepositional expression. The visible word is identical, but its grammatical job decides the complement.
07 / 07
How can you practise verbs followed by gerunds or infinitives?
Practise verbs followed by gerunds or infinitives most reliably with small verb-pattern cards. Put the first verb on the front and a natural chunk on the back: enjoy preparing, decide to postpone, tell someone to call, or start working / to work. Then sort new examples into the three main routes and the small both-forms group. Create an everyday or office sentence for each pattern instead of reading only an abstract list. One planning note can connect all the routes: "We decided to postpone the launch. Maya suggested moving the review. I asked Ben to update the slides." Finish with the email phrase "I look forward to hearing from you." When you retrieve the first verb together with its complement, the form choice becomes faster and more natural.