Verbs Followed by Infinitive or -ING form

In Unit 5 we are working with verbs followed by infinitive or -ing form. In class, we've seen that there are not many rules to say which verb goes with each form. In general, we have these three big groups:

• verbs indicating likes and dislikes go with -ING form: like, love, hate, don't mind, fancy, feel like, can't stand...
• after prepositions: -ING form
• verbs inidicating desire and/or command go with infinitive: want, hope, decide, expect, need, ask, choose, etc.

There is a general tendency to distinguish between -ing form and infinitive:

• Infinitives are usually referred to future actions
• -ing forms are usually connected to past or present actions

Let's have these two sentences:

• I like playing tennis (first I play then I like it; playing tennis is reffered to a past action which comes up to now)
• I'd like to play tennis (first I like, I want to do something and then I do it; to play is referred to a future action)

This link gives some clues (pistas) about when you use gerund or infinitive; click here

Here you are a list of adjectives followed by prepositions so you must use -ING like in this example: she is good at playing chess. click here for the list

Another way of learning the verb pattern is to use synonims and the contrary. Let's see an example:

• finish / stop / give up + -ing form  -----  continue / keep on / go on / start / beguin  + -ing form

But the best way to learn this grammar point is by doing many exercises. You can use these:
exercise 1     exercise 2     exercise 3    exercise 4

To finish with, here you have some videos with songs using gerund or infinitive: click here