Though gerunds and present participles share the same -ing form, their grammatical roles differ: gerunds act as nouns, while participles act as verbs or adjectives. For example, 'Reading helps me ...

Gerunds are the -ing form of a verb, and infinitives are the to + base form. These words can be confusing; they combine the meaning of a verb with the grammar of a noun. My father asked me to phone ...

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript. Do you have a question you want us to answer? You can send us your questions to learningenglish@bbc.co.uk Rafael has sent us a question. He wants to ...

LAST week we took up the perfect infinitive as a grammatical form that, in tandem with the main verb of a sentence, either refers to things that might have happened in the past, as in “The board seems ...