ESL Grammar Test : Gerunds and Infinitives - Gerunds are verbs that act as nouns. Some verbs in English are followed by gerunds and others by infitives-yet others use both and sometimes with a change in meaning for ex. She stopped to answer the phone.(infitive) . She stopped answering the phone (gerund). In the first example, the action that came first was "Stopped" and in the second example the action that came first is "Answering". Try this test.