Gerunds and Infinitives

Gerunds and infinitives are forms of verbs that act like nouns. They can follow adjectives and other verbs. Gerunds can also follow prepositions. A gerund (often known as an -ing word) is a noun formed from a verb by adding ing. See also Nouns/Gerund. Not all words formed with -ing are gerunds. An infinitive is to + the verb. When a verb follows a verb it either takes the gerund or infinitive form. Some verbs can take either the gerund or the infinitive with no loss of meaning. example: With the verb start - "It started to rain." or "It started raining." Both sentences have the same meaning.

Reported Speech Definition: Reported Speech (also called Indirect Speech) is used to communicate what someone else said, think or believe, but without using the exact words. A few changes are necessary; often a pronoun has to be changed and the verb is usually moved back a tense, where possible. example: He said that he was going to come. * The person's exact words were "I'm going to come".

Imperatives Definition: Imperatives are verbs used to give orders, commands,warning or instructions, and (if you use "please") to make a request. It is one of the three moods of an English verb (indicative, imperative and subjunctive). example: Give me that tape, please. To make the imperative, use the infinitive of the verb without "to" example: Come here! Sit down! To make a negative imperative, put "do not" or "don't" before the verb: example: Don't go! Do not walk on the grass