🔀 Grammar B2-8: Gerund vs infinitive with change of meaning

The B1 lesson on verb patterns ended with a preview: stop to buy against stop buying, one verb telling two different stories. This material pays that promise in full and hands the learner a single key instead of seven separate rules — the -ing form looks back at, or straight at, the activity itself, while the to-infinitive looks forward to whatever comes next. Six minimal pairs each get their own compare-and-verdict panel: remember and forget split the memory (I remember posting it) from the duty ahead (I must remember to post it); stop divides the activity that ended from the pause taken in order to do something else; try separates the easy experiment (try restarting the server) from the effort that may fail (try to lift the crate); regret sets the honest backward apology against the frozen formal announcement, regret to say, regret to inform, present tense only; go on distinguishes the same activity running on from the next stage of a career; and mean tests the subject, because a plan involves work while only a person intends anything. A six-row table gathers the whole family, a note-box marks the boundary with start, begin, continue, like and love, where the two forms really are free variation, and a four-move decide list runs the master key with two worked examples. The editor of a regional weekly writes a 150-word note to her newsroom in which four of the verbs appear in both forms within a few lines. Practice runs to thirty-four explained multiple-choice items across four sets, a twelve-phrase sorter on the direction of the gaze, six repairs of sentences that are perfectly grammatical and simply report the wrong event, and four traps that survive into C1. Teacher notes carry the 45-minute sequence, the arrow-on-the-board move, a minimal-pair dictation drill and Cambridge B2 First relevance.