In English, a gerund is a tense-less verb that's used as a noun. The present participle and the gerund both have the same verb form: -ing. These are the verb forms used in the present progressive.
Where English uses an -ing verb as a noun, Spanish uses the infinitive. This is because Spanish uses their present participles (which they also call gerunds) in adverb-y constructions—and never, ever as nouns.
Here are a few examples of gerunds in English:
- Eating people is wrong.
- Leila's biggest mistake was calling him back.
- I'm really good at procrastinating.
If you're having trouble seeing how these -ing verbs can be nouns, just replace the junk that goes with the gerund with a "real" noun and you'll see. Here, we did it for you:
- Cannibalism is wrong.
- Leila's biggest mistake was love.
- I'm really good at computer games.
Still, present participles in English are used for more than just gerunds. To learn about that, check out the next section. To learn more about gerunds in English in general, check out our plain ol' Gerunds section.