Aulas Multimídias – Santa Cecília Teacher Douglas

Let’s Go Hunting for Gerunds! Santa Cecilia High School ENG1A

Gerunds burrowing… scratching … crawling… falling… These ugly critters are a menace until you hunt them down and use them correctly! Here are some examples:

Know your enemy! To hunt and use those pesky gerunds, you need to know more about them. You will recognize that gerunds come from verbs, but… they act as NOUNS!!!

Locating your prey! Gerunds are tricky little critters! You’ll find them hiding in sentences as the Subject or as the Object. So Gerunds can be both subjective and objective!

As a subject, that Gerund may look like this… Hunting for Gerunds is my favorite grammatical sport.

As the object, the Gerund may look like this… Gerunds are good at running for their lives.

If they really want to trick you… A gerund can also act as a compliment or appositive for a noun. Like this: I had the critter, clawing and spitting, in my sights.

See if you can spot them in time! Sleeping peacefully, the gerund never saw it coming. Find the pesky critter! The gerund sleeping is part of an appositive phrase modifying the subject.

Look out! There’s two of ‘em! Hunting gerunds is amusing! The gerund hunting is a subject. The gerund amusing is an object.

Go out and get ‘em! Remember, gerunds may look like -ing verbs … But they act like nouns. Find and use them as the subject, object, or noun complement in a sentence. Happy Hunting!