Gerund or Infinitive? 30 Exercises With Instant Answers

There is no universal trick that tells you whether a verb takes a gerund (-ing) or an infinitive (to + verb). The system has two halves: for most verbs the pattern is fixed collocation — enjoy, avoid, suggest, and prepositions take a gerund, while decide, hope, refuse, and most verbs of intention take to + infinitive — and for a short list of verbs (stop, remember, forget, regret, try) the two forms are both possible but mean different things.

The 30 exercises below are sorted from warm-up to challenge and cover both halves, including let, make, and help with the bare infinitive. Every answer is checked instantly with a one-line explanation of the rule, so each miss teaches you the pattern rather than just the answer.

The Two-Pattern System in One Table

English pairs every verb with exactly one form most of the time, and the pairs fall into three learnable families: verbs that take a gerund, verbs that take a to-infinitive, and verbs that take an object plus infinitive. Memorize the families, not the language-learner myth that meaning decides.

The Six Verbs That Change Meaning: stop, remember, forget, regret, try, mean

A short list of verbs accepts both forms and shifts meaning between them. The logic is consistent: the to-infinitive points forward to a task, while the gerund looks back at an activity or experience. Stop drinking = quit the habit; stop to drink = pause in order to drink. Remember to lock = don’t neglect the task; remember locking = recall the past act. Regret to tell = formal bad-news formula; regret telling = remorse about what you did.

This is the half of the topic that exams and editors actually test, because the wrong form produces a real change of meaning rather than just a jar. When you meet one of these six verbs, ask one question: is the action already done (-ing) or still to be done (to)?

The Bare Infinitive: Let, Make, Help — Where To Disappears

After let and make, English drops the to entirely: let me go, made him apologize. Learners over-apply the to-rule here because most object verbs (want you to know, told us to wait) need it. The passive flips the pattern — he was made to apologize — and let, which has no passive, is replaced by be allowed to: we were allowed to stay. Help is the odd one out, accepting both: help me carry it and help me to carry it are both correct.

Two fixed expressions behave the same way: would rather (I’d rather stay) and had better (you’d better leave). If you can insert a silent to and the sentence breaks, the verb is one of the bare ones.

The Most Reliable Rule in the Topic: Prepositions Take -ing

If a preposition (at, in, on, of, for, about, without, before, after) sits in front of the verb, the verb is a gerund, every time, with no exceptions to memorize: interested in learning, without asking, before leaving, good at listening. The trap is the fake preposition — the to in look forward to, be used to, object to, admit to — which is a preposition despite looking like an infinitive marker.

That fake to is why I look forward to hear from you is wrong in thousands of cover letters. The test: can you put a noun after the to? Look forward to the meeting works — so to is a preposition, and the verb must take its gerund shape: look forward to hearing.

Why Gerund and Infinitive Choices Feel Like Guessing

If your first language marks verbs with one fixed form — as Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Turkish do, with a single connective no matter the verb — then English’s verb-by-verb split looks like pure arbitrariness, because your language genuinely has no equivalent of the choice. Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian speakers have it slightly easier: their infinitives map neatly onto English to + verb, which is exactly why they overuse the infinitive after enjoy and suggest. German and Dutch speakers reach for zu/te constructions where English wants a gerund, and French speakers translate faire faire patterns into make + to do instead of make + do.

Because the choice is arbitrary at the verb level, it cannot be reasoned out at the moment of writing — it has to be retrieved, and retrieval comes from repetition with feedback. That is what the instant-check quiz above trains: thirty decisions where the wrong choice is corrected while the pattern is still in working memory.

How to Practice Gerunds and Infinitives So They Stick

Two passes work better than one. Pass one: drill the fixed patterns until retrieval is instant — the 30 questions above, one set a day for a week. Pass two: collect the meaning-changers (stop, remember, forget, regret, try, mean) and write one sentence of your own for each pair of meanings.

Then let your own writing be the exercise. Paste an email or essay into PromGee’s free grammar checker and every gerund/infinitive slip is flagged with the rule and the correct pattern — turning your real sentences into a personalized drill set.

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