In this lesson, you can learn English about gerunds along with gerunds examples and gerunds definition. I will teach you gerunds and gerund phrases as well as gerunds meaning. Gerunds in English are a bit difficult to understand, so watch this gerunds in English grammar lesson to learn the use of gerunds in English. How to use gerunds? The topic for the lesson is: Learn English about gerunds. What are gerunds? A form that is derived from a verb but that functions as a noun, in English ending in -"ing."
Okay, let's go to one of our questions from YouTube. So, here um the username is lost zinc,
“Hi, I’m from Thailand. My questions are how to or how to use a gerund and how to use these single quotations in sentences? Thank you so much, you are so sweet.”
Thank you, you are so sweet. Thank you for your comment and let me go ahead and answer your two questions here.
What are gerunds?
So, gerunds are words that are formed with verbs, but act as nouns. This is a little complicated, but when you see some examples hopefully it helps. So, an easy way to spot a gerund is every gerund is a verb plus -ing. So, gerunds maintain some verb like properties even though they act as nouns. Like a verb, they can take a direct object and can be modified with an adverb.
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For example, here's our gerund drinking, drinking a pint. Here the direct object is pint. So, can it function similarly to a verb? Driving erratically. So here, driving is modified with an adverb, erratically. So here we have our gerund and acting like a verb modified by an adverb. Or regularly visiting the hospital. “Visiting” is modified by “regularly” and has a direct object the hospital.
Okay, a little confusing so let's go ahead and look at some more ways we can use gerunds.
So, here we have a helpful chart, and we see “running” is the gerund we're looking at, and what are the different ways we can use them. So first we can use them as the subject of a verb. For example, “running is a good way to explore.” So here, “running” is the gerund, “is” is our verb. So, running is the subject of our verb. “Running is a good way to explore.” It can also be the object of a verb. “He likes running.” Here, “likes” is our verb and our gerund “running” acts as a noun in this sentence. Just like I could say, “he likes games, he likes playing games.” There ”playing” as a gerund. “He likes running,” here “running” is the gerund.
We can also use them as an as the object of a preposition. “I am thinking of running.” So here we have our verb “am” right. “I am thinking of running.” So, running is our gerund. The object of a preposition. And also, as a subject complement. So here we're renaming the subject, “my new hobby is running.” And this is going to lead us very well into our next question, which is when do we use to plus verb -ing? Which is also something we can do with gerund sometimes.
Okay, so these are gerunds and I think this is something we can do a whole future video about because they can be a little confusing. So, I hope that I gave you a useful answer for now and in the future don't be surprised if you see a longer video going over this very interesting grammar point.
