Teaching Gerunds and Infinitives to ESL Students

Probably one of the most difficult concepts an ESL student has to understand and apply when learning the English language is that of the gerund.
Many languages, particularly the Romance Languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian,
all national languages) have the infinitive forms of their verbs, and students are taught to conjugate them to express verbs with respect to voices,
modes, tenses, and persons (first, second, and third person). But most Asian languages do not conjugate their verbs, or, if they do conjugate, they do
so very differently than we do in English. So, once the process of teaching basic verbs and their conjugated forms to students has begun, the idea of then
introducing them to a form of a verb which is used as a noun becomes daunting.

I find that one of the most effective modes of teaching my ESL students is similar to the way that we teach youngsters to learn vocabulary and begin
to construct simple sentences: visual clues. True, a certain amount of memorization is required just to learn verbs, and to recognize action verbs versus
linking verbs, but even these words can be more easily learned with the help of flash cards and simple charts which are presented in a colorful
and even amusing way.

So the first step would be present the students a number of simple, basic, frequently used action verbs:

These can all be illustrated with flashcards and/or charts.

The next step is to show which (main) verbs can be followed by gerunds, infinitives, and in some cases, both:

I ADMIT sleeping late. *** I ANTICIPATE going on vacation.
*** I APPRECIATE having my own bedroom. *** I DELAY doing
homework until the last minute, etc.

I AGREE to volunteer at the orphanage. *** She APPEARS to drive
recklessly. *** I EXPECT to know the results of the test soon. *** I NEED
to study for the test.

I ATTEMPT to challenge myself with difficult tasks. *** I ATTEMPT challenging myself
with difficult tasks. *** I LOVE to sleep. I LOVE sleeping.

To summarize, the key to learning these seemingly contradictory verb forms is repetition and illustration.