What are Gerunds? Learn English about Gerunds l Gerunds Examples

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.  

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. 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.