Gerund or Infinitive?

"To be, or being: that is the question."

Statement of Form

verb + verb_ing

verb + to + base form

verb + base form

What students need to know

When a verb is followed by another verb, the second verb has to be in the right form to fit with the first, e.g:

He pretended to be dead, not, He pretended being dead. (any verb following “pretend” has to be “to + base form”)

She enjoys skiing downhill, not, She enjoys to ski downhill. (any verb following “enjoy” has to be “verb_ing”)

Or, it might need to be in the base form (sometime called the “bare infinitive”) – two common examples are “let and “make”:

“At our school, they made us wear a tie, but they let us wear trainers.” (I know, that’s a pretty odd school, but, then again, they made us wear the odd school tie.)

Conditionals - Mixed

If you’d called the repair company like I told you, we’d have a working microwave now.

If you’d read the instruction book like I suggested, we wouldn't have a charcoal meringue.

Statement of Form

If + past perfect, would + base form OR

If + past simple, would + have + past participle

What students need to know

It's called mixed because it mixes references to past and present, both being hypothetical. It doesn't matter which half of the sentence does which:

Ed: “If you had any balls, you’d have asked the girl in the pink dress to dance.”

Seth: “If you’d had your glasses on, you’d know why I didn’t.”

         

Let’s look more closely at this:

Ed: You, Seth, lack courage (generally); for this reason you missed a fantastic opportunity (in the past).

Seth: You, Ed, lacked adequately corrected vision (in the past), which perhaps explains why you are so clueless. (now and generally)

What students struggle with

Depression and paranoia mainly, when it dawns on them that we've been lying to them all along. When they realize that, in fact, conditionals rarely slot into the neat categories of “first”, “second” and “third” that they met earlier in their studies. This is more like how people really speak.

Structure: have (or get) something done

Louvre security guard 1: Is the Mona Lisa supposed to have a moustache?

Louvre security guard 2: No.

Guard 1: Looks like we’ll be getting it restored then.

Guard 2: Oops.

Statement of form

have or get (in any tense or structure) + something + past participle

What students need to know

We use this when someone else does something for us, because we don't have the skill, time, inclination or authority to do it ourselves:

"We got the election result overturned." (We didn’t have the authority to overturn it ourselves.)

"I had my hip replaced." (I didn't have the umpteen years of medical training, access to anaesthetics, equipment or highly trained support team to do it myself.)

"We had our carpets professionally cleaned." (We have far more money than is good for us.)

"I got my boobs reduced." (no logical reason.)