Basics. Gerunds After It's No Use and There's No Point In

Hard B2 | Upper Intermediate Gerund Negation Past tense Phrase Preposition Subject Verb Verb tense Collocations Idiom

Gerunds After It's No Use and There's No Point In

When you want to express that an action will not have a successful or useful result, English relies on two common phrases: "it's no use" and "there's no point in." The tricky part for many learners is remembering that both expressions must be followed by a gerund (-ing form), not an infinitive. For example, you should say "It's no use worrying" (not to worry) and "There's no point in arguing" (not to argue).

In this hard-level challenge, you will identify the correct gerund forms, avoid common infinitive traps, and maintain the correct prepositional structures. You'll apply these rules across a variety of entertaining scenarios, from helping a frustrated spaceship mechanic and advising survivors on how to deal with zombies, to completing reports about cursed office printers and one-sided dragon sieges.

You'll work through 11 questions presented in a mix of single-choice, multi-choice, drop-down, and drag-and-drop formats.

Try the quiz to check your knowledge!

Back View Answers Start

Gerund

✅ I enjoy reading. — ❌ I enjoy to read.
✅ She's good at swimming. — ❌ She's good at to swim.
✅ He avoids making eye contact. — gerund after avoid
✅ Running is good exercise. — gerund as subject

A gerund is the -ing form of a verb functioning as a noun. It follows verbs like enjoy, avoid, finish, mind and ALL prepositions. Never use an infinitive where a gerund is required.

Rule: after a preposition (at, in, of, about, without) → always gerund. After enjoy, avoid, finish, mind, suggest, deny → always gerund.

Negation

✅ I don't see anything. — ❌ I don't see nothing. (double negative in standard English)
✅ She never goes out. — never already negates (no doesn't needed)
✅ He doesn't like coffee. — do-support for negation
✅ Nobody came. — negative subject (no auxiliary needed)

Negation uses not after an auxiliary/modal, or do-support when there's no auxiliary. One negative per clause in standard English — never, nobody, nothing already negate without adding not.

Rule: one negative element per clause. I don't see anything or I see nothing — never both together in standard English.

Past tense

I walked home. — simple past (completed action)
I was walking when it rained. — past progressive (in progress)
I had already left when she arrived. — past perfect (earlier past)
I had been waiting for an hour. — past perfect progressive (duration up to a past point)

Four past tense forms: simple past (done), past progressive (was happening), past perfect (had already happened), past perfect progressive (had been happening). Each encodes different timing relative to other past events.

Pattern: simple past = the story's main timeline. Past progressive = background action. Past perfect = flashback to something even earlier.

Phrase

the red car — noun phrase (functions as one noun unit)
on the table — prepositional phrase
has been running — verb phrase
very quickly — adverb phrase

A phrase is a group of words that functions as a single unit WITHOUT a subject + verb pair. Types: noun phrase, verb phrase, prepositional phrase, adjective phrase, adverb phrase.

Key distinction: a phrase lacks a subject-verb pair. If it has subject + verb → it's a clause, not a phrase. Phrases are the building blocks clauses are made of.

Preposition

✅ interested in — ❌ interested on
✅ good at football — ❌ good in football
✅ depend on — ❌ depend of
✅ arrive at the station — ❌ arrive to the station

Prepositions link nouns to the rest of the sentence: time (at 5pm), place (in London), manner (with care), abstract (afraid of). Most are idiomatic — the "correct" preposition must be memorised with each verb/adjective combination.

Rule: there is no universal rule. English prepositions are learned by combination: interested IN, good AT, depend ON, afraid OF. Your native language's equivalent will often mislead.

Subject

✅ The list of items is wrong. — subject = list (singular), not items
❌ The list of items are wrong. — trapped by nearest noun
✅ Running is good exercise. — gerund as subject
✅ What he said surprised me. — clause as subject

The subject is the noun/pronoun/phrase before the verb that controls its number and person. Finding the true subject — especially through prepositional phrases — is the key to subject-verb agreement.

Rule: strip away prepositional phrases between subject and verb. Whatever's left is the true subject. The list (of items) is wrong.

Verb

walk → walk / walks / walked / walked / walking (5 forms, regular)
go → go / goes / went / gone / going (5 forms, irregular)
be → am/is/are/was/were/be/being/been (8 forms)
can → can / could (modal: only 2 forms, no -s, no -ing)

A verb is the one word class every English sentence requires. Carries tense (when), aspect (duration), mood (attitude), and voice (active/passive). Regular verbs add -ed; ~200 irregular verbs have unpredictable past forms.

Key insight: fix your verbs and most grammar problems disappear. Wrong tense, wrong agreement, wrong form — verb errors account for the majority of grammatical mistakes.

Verb tense

	Simple	Progressive	Perfect	Perfect Progressive
Past	worked	was working	had worked	had been working
Present	work(s)	am working	have worked	have been working
Future	will work	will be working	will have worked	will have been working

Verb tense = time (past/present/future) × aspect (simple/progressive/perfect) = 12 forms. Each slot has a specific job — not just "when" but "how the action relates to its time frame."

Key insight: most learners don't need all 12 at once. Simple covers 80% of communication. Add perfect and progressive as needed.

Collocations

✅ make a decision — ❌ do a decision
✅ strong coffee — ❌ powerful coffee
✅ heavy rain — ❌ strong rain
✅ highly unlikely — ❌ very unlikely (grammatical, but less natural)

Collocations are word pairs that English habitually puts together. Both options may be grammatically valid, but one sounds native and the other doesn't.

Pattern: there's no logic to predict them — you make decisions but do homework, you have strong coffee but heavy rain. They must be learned as chunks, not deduced from rules.

Idiom

It's raining cats and dogs. — means "raining heavily" (not literal animals)
Break a leg! — means "good luck" (not an injury wish)
Spill the beans — means "reveal a secret"
Kick the bucket — means "to die" (no actual bucket involved)

Idioms are fixed phrases whose meaning can't be guessed from the individual words. They must be memorised as complete units — word-by-word translation from another language almost always fails.

Pattern: if a phrase is literally absurd but everyone uses it with a specific meaning → it's an idiom. Learn it as a chunk, not as individual words.

B2 | Upper Intermediate

✅ If I had studied harder, I would have passed. — third conditional
✅ The report is being reviewed by the committee. — passive progressive
✅ Having finished the exam, she left. — participle clause
✅ He denied having taken the money. — complex verb pattern

These are B2 patterns — the CEFR upper-intermediate level. At B2 you handle mixed conditionals, all passive forms, participle clauses, and can argue a point clearly. This is the level most universities and employers require.

Marker: if you can write a structured essay and debate an abstract topic, you're B2.

Hard

Had she not intervened, the situation would have escalated. — inverted conditional
All distractors are grammatically plausible in other contexts
Multiple rules interact (e.g., tense + aspect + modality)
Context determines the answer — no single "rule" is enough

Hard marks upper-intermediate to advanced challenges: B2+, interacting rules, edge cases, plausible distractors, and contexts where pattern-matching fails.

Use "Hard" when Easy/Medium feel trivial and you want to test whether you actually understand a rule versus just recognising surface patterns.