To do Vs doing Sentence Pattern

Question

Hi:To do and doing sentence patterns are easy but sometimes make me scratch my head. for example, When expressing learning English is not easy, should I say as follows:?1. Learning English is not an easy job.2.To learning English is not an easy job.3. It's not an easy job to learn English.4. It's not an easy job learning English. (This may be wrong, but can I say: It's not easy learning English)? What are the minute differences between the four abovementioned sentence patterns. Thanks!In addition, What about the following sentences? Are they the same in meaning?1. Our job/purpose is to persuade him to accept the proposal.2. Our job/purpose is persuading him to accept the proposal.Thanks very much!Xin Yan

Yanx · Accepted Answer

too easy??? Thanks in advance !  ^_^

Ferdis · Answer

1. Learning English is not an easy job.

This is fine and quite common. "Learning English" is a gerund (noun-like) and functions as the subject of the sentence.

2.To learn~~ing~~ English is not an easy job.

"To learning English" is incorrect; it should be "To learn English", an infinitive form. The latter is also fine but more abstract and less common than the gerund.

3. It's not an easy job to learn English.

This sentence is extraposed, so the subject (to learn English) is at the end. The meaning is the same as for #2.

4. It's not an easy job learning English.

Again, this sentence is extraposed with the same meaning as #1.

(This may be wrong, but can I say: It's not easy learning English)?

Yes, that's also fine. It's an extraposed version of "Learning English is not easy."

1. Our job/purpose is to persuade him to accept the proposal.

2. Our job/purpose is persuading him to accept the proposal.

Both are OK, but I'd use #1 to avoid the potential misreading of "is persuading" as a present continuous verb. Sometimes there's a subtle difference in meaning between gerunds (more real) and infinitives (more abstract). A good tutorial can be found here: http://www.englishpage.com/gerunds/part_1.htm

Anonymous · Answer

ferdis
1. Our job/purpose is to persuade him to accept the proposal.

2. Our job/purpose is persuading him to accept the proposal.

Our mission is to create the most reliable products and best quality....

It's our goal to achieve an annual revenue of one milliom in two years

My personal feeling is, when you have "an intent", it would only be correct to use infintive form of the verb, rather than the gerund form.

To do Vs doing Sentence Pattern

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