«I enjoy to read»: when English wants -ing and when it wants to

You're telling your London roommate what you do on Sundays, and the sentence comes out smooth: "I enjoy to read in the park." She understands you, but something grates, and you can't tell what.

Spanish puts an infinitive after almost any verb (disfruto leer, evito discutir), so your brain reaches for the direct equivalent, which is to. In a corpus of essays by Spanish university students, to-complements beat -ing complements 1,094 to 179. English sorts verbs into three groups: verbs that take -ing (enjoy reading), verbs that take to (want to read), and a handful where the choice changes the meaning (stop smoking vs. stop to smoke). For most verbs there's no logic to work out: the fix is to learn each verb with its pattern attached, as a single chunk. The meaning-based intuition (to points toward the next action; -ing puts you inside the action or treats it as something that already exists) is reliable only for that last handful.

Spanish speakers' preference for to comes from direct translation. Maria Teresa Martinez-Garcia, who ran that analysis at the University of North Texas, puts it this way: "The fact that the to-construction has a translational equivalent in Spanish makes it easy for Spanish learners to use this structure." Her thesis also finds the opposite error, -ing where to belonged, and reads it as learners trying to use a structure they haven't mastered yet. Under pressure, to comes out; -ing shows up now and then, without any real criterion.

A wrong to or -ing rarely breaks the sentence, but it gives the speaker away. After analyzing more than 1,100 examples from a learner corpus, Martinez-Garcia and Stefanie Wulff conclude that "advanced learners' construction choices are not necessarily ungrammatical, yet often non-idiomatic," and that German learners come closer to native usage than Spanish speakers do. The Cambridge University Press research team notes that the wrong verb form stands out for Spanish speakers compared with other first languages, even though prepositions and tenses cause more errors overall.

Enjoy to read or enjoy reading? The verbs that only take -ing#

Wrong: "I enjoy to read on the train."
Right: "I enjoy reading on the train."

Enjoy, avoid, mind, finish, consider, keep, and give up only take -ing after them. The Cambridge grammar groups them in a list and flags the mistake explicitly: "Not: I always enjoy to cook". Suggest works the same way, and the Spanish learner corpus contains sentences like "Imagination suggests to invent new things", copied straight from «la imaginación sugiere inventar».

Meaning won't rescue you in this group. Avoid looks ahead to something that hasn't happened and still takes -ing; Patrick J. Duffley and Maryse Arseneau show in their 2012 analysis that in He considered eating the cookies the -ing describes something in the future. Enjoy reading, avoid driving, and finish writing are learned as chunks, just like make a mistake.

An engineer from Bogotá, in her first one-on-one in Toronto, asks her manager: "Would you mind to send me the slides?" What should have come out was "Would you mind sending me the slides?"

Verb + -ing chunks stick when you say them out loud, not when you read them in a list. Can you get I've been avoiding calling him out in one go? That's the practice Tabla trains: short phrases you translate by speaking, with speech recognition scoring your answer, until the pattern comes out on its own.

"Quiero que vengas": why I want that you come doesn't work#

Wrong: "I want that you come to the party."
Right: "I want you to come to the party."

In Spanish, querer is followed by que + subjunctive when someone else does the action. In English, want puts the person right after the verb and then adds to. Cambridge puts it bluntly: "We don't use want with a that-clause". Want also belongs on the opposite list from enjoy: according to Stefan Th. Gries and Stefanie Wulff, need, offer, and promise almost always take to, and hope, decide, and plan follow the same pattern (I decided to stay).

I want that you come is a classic interference error. An error analysis of compositions by advanced Spanish students, published in the University of Zaragoza journal Miscelánea, records I want that you come with me and the same pattern with other verbs: He told Susan that she phone us instead of He told Susan to phone us. The same person-plus-to pattern covers ask, tell, need, and would like: I'd like you to meet Ana.

A project manager from Monterrey opens the weekly call with the Dublin team: "I need you to review the ticket before Friday." To sound softer, "I'd like you to review it." Never "I want that you review it."

Look forward to see or look forward to seeing: when to is a preposition#

Wrong: "I look forward to hear from you."
Right: "I look forward to hearing from you."

The to in look forward to is a preposition, not the infinitive marker. Cambridge explains: "The 'to' in look forward to is a preposition, so we must follow it by a noun phrase or a verb in the -ing form". After any preposition, the verb takes -ing: before leaving, thanks for coming.

Be used to hides the same trap: «estoy acostumbrado a trabajar tarde» is I'm used to working late. The quick test: if a noun fits after the to (I look forward to the weekend), it's a preposition and the verb takes -ing.

A candidate from Santiago, Chile, drafts his email after an interview in Boston and ends it with "I look forward to hear from you." Before sending it, he runs the test: I look forward to the next steps works, so the to is a preposition. He changes the line to "I look forward to hearing from you."

Stop smoking or stop to smoke: the verbs that change meaning#

Wrong (if you quit): "I stopped to smoke two years ago."
Right: "I stopped smoking two years ago."

With stop, the choice changes the whole meaning. According to the British Council, stop + -ing means the action isn't happening anymore, and stop + to means you stop one activity in order to do something else. I stopped smoking means you quit; I stopped to smoke means you paused for a cigarette.

The time-based intuition does work for remember, forget, and try. I remember locking the door is a memory; Remember to lock the door is something still pending, and forget follows the same logic. Try + -ing is testing a solution (Have you tried turning it off and on again?); try + to is making an effort at something hard (I'm trying to sleep).

Your London roommate shouts from the door, "Remember to lock the door!" The next day she finds it open, and you swear: "I remember locking it!"

The "to = future" rule works for this small group (stop, remember, forget, and try), not for English as a whole. Duffley and Arseneau challenge it (in Jenny managed to pass the course, the to describes something that did happen) and point out that "it is controversial that English even possesses a future tense at all." Even so, a small study suggests that teaching the meaning helps: with 38 Korean high school students, the group that learned the contrast between to and -ing through images averaged 87.37 points vs. 72.11 for the group that practiced the form.

With like, love, and hate, the choice is usually a matter of style. Cambridge says the difference in meaning "is often small" and that in American English the to form is much more common. The one fixed rule is would like to: I'd like to go, never I'd like going.

What does I stopped to buy coffee on the way to work mean?

That you were on your way to work and paused in order to buy coffee: the to marks the purpose of the stop. If you had given up the habit, you'd say I stopped buying coffee.

The next time you catch a to sneaking in after enjoy, avoid, or finish, pause for half a second and swap it for -ing.

Try this today: write five sentences about your week using enjoy, avoid, finish, mind, and keep followed by -ing (for example, I avoided checking my email on Sunday), and say each one out loud three times.