Learning English is fun. Learning English, he had a lot of fun. How u know that the first learning is gerund while the other is participleI know that gerund is nounBut participle is adjecrive or adve

Hazem

Learning English is fun. Learning English, he had a lot of fun. How u know that the first learning is gerund while the other is participle
I know that gerund is noun
But participle is adjecrive or adverb
But how to know the different in the context

Apr 4, 2019 11:01 PM

Comments · 3

When you are trying to figure out if an -ing word is a gerund, ask yourself, "Can I add the words The Act of to the beginning of the -ing word, and the meaning will not change?"

Eating is fun. >>>>>>THE ACT OF eating is fun. That means the same thing, so eating is a gerund.

Now let's try it with the second sentence to see if it is a gerund:

Learning English, he had a lot of fun. >>>>THE ACT OF learning English, he had a lot of fun. WTF? This makes no sense. It is NOT a gerund, It has to be a participle!

By the way, you could rearrange this sentence and it means the same thing:

He had a lot of fun learning English. Let's try our little test again to see if it is a gerund. He had a lot of fun THE ACT OF learning English. >>>>Nope! It makes no sense whatsoever, so it has to be a participle.

You realize, of course, that our present progressive tense is made up of a form of to be plus the -ing participle?

I am eating pizza.

Seeing the -ing participle as a part of the verb makes it a little more obvious that it is not a gerund.

April 5, 2019