Name: Improve Your Grammar: 4 ways to use -ING words in English
Uploaded: 2017-05-18T14:50:23.000Z
Duration: 8 min 27 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In today's lesson we're going to look at some grammar points that is very, very important,

mostly because it's very confusing to a lot of people.

We're going to look at the four different uses of "ing" words.

Now, I don't want to say "ing" verb because that makes it a little confusing as well

Words that end in "ing" could be used as nouns, as verbs, as adjectives, and as adverbs.

So we're going to look at how they are used in each way.

So first we are going to look at them as they are used as nouns.

Now, technically, in whatever situation you're seeing an "ing" word, it's always a verb.

But it could be used as a noun, in which case it is called a gerund.

You're never going to use this word outside of your grammar class, but in case I refer

to it again: A "gerund" is an "ing" word being used as a noun.

So if we're looking at this sentence: "Wearing loose pants while riding a bicycle is dangerous."

So the subject of this sentence is "wearing".

"Wearing is dangerous", "Wearing loose pants is dangerous",

and then everything else I'll talk about in a second.

Now, a gerund "ing" is basically the activity of the verb.

So, "to wear" means, like, to have clothes on.

Wearing a blue shirt makes me look taller, maybe.

Because I'm on camera you can't tell. Right?

Smoking is the activity, running is the activity.

Now, here, this word is actually not a gerund and it's not really a verb either.

It has the verb idea, but it is actually a participle, which we're going to talk about

So this is a participle, this is a gerund, just the activity itself.

So we're going to call it a noun for now.

Then we have the verb, the everyday verb in the continuous tense; past, present, future

If you don't see an "ing" verb connected to a "be" verb then it's not a verb,

Okay? There's always going to be a "be" verb when you're using it as an actual verb, as an action.

Right now this is what he is doing, he is riding a bicycle.

That's the one everybody's the most comfortable with.

"Wearing a blue, backless dress, the actress created quite a stir at the party."

Now, "wearing" is your participle, your active participle.

We also have past participle which is in...

Used in the passive form, but we're going to talk about that in a different lesson.

"Wearing" here, I'm describing the actress.

So if I want to open it up, if I want to write it in a different way,

Because I'm in the past, so I have "was".

"The actress who was wearing a blue, backless dress created quite a stir."

So the participle is just a reduced adjective clause.

What I do is I take out the conjunction, the pronoun and subject, I take out the "be" verb,

I have only the participle phrase, it's no...

It's not a clause anymore, there's no subject and verb anymore, there's just a phrase - I

can put it at the beginning of the sentence as long as the subject of the participle is

the same as the subject of the independent clause. Okay?

Now, if you're not sure what I'm talking about, you can watch the video about adjective clauses,

you can watch the video about independent clauses, you'll get a better idea

Now, where it gets confusing is I can do the exact same thing, but I can use it as an adverb.

"Not wanting to miss our flight, we arrived at the airport 3 hrs early."

This is three hours, sorry, I had to reduce a little bit.

Now, you've probably heard never to use the word "want" with an "ing".

Never use "want", "wanting" as a verb, but you can use it as a participle.

"As we didn't want" or "Because we didn't want", both okay.

"As we didn't want to miss our flight, we arrived at the airport three hours early."

Now, you're thinking: "What's going on here?"

So here's our negative, here's our negative.

Now, what I'm doing here, again, I'm reducing.

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Improve Your Grammar: 4 ways to use -ING words in English

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