Running a Meeting: gerunds and infinitives for chairing a meeting
About this lesson
Gerunds and infinitives run through this B2 Business English lesson plan on chairing a meeting, from suggest starting to agree to test.
- Grammar
- Verb + -ing (suggest starting), verb + to (agree to test), verb + someone + to, preposition + -ing (look forward to hearing), and remember, stop and try with both forms.
- Topic
- A roastery's weekly operations meeting about adding a second shift, with words such as agenda, action item, take the minutes and sum up.
- Activities
- An agenda email, a meeting where a colleague pushes back, phrases to sort, self-checking drills, a chat reporting the decisions, chair role-plays on a wheel, then a summary email and a recording.
What's inside
Chapter 1Warm-up: Another Meeting?
Chapter 2Reading: Tomorrow's Agenda
Chapter 3Listening: One Shift or Two?
Chapter 4Grammar: Suggest Doing, Agree to Do
Chapter 5Speaking: Over to You, Chair
Chapter 6Homework: After the Meeting
Meeting vocabulary
10 words and phrases from the lesson, each with a picture and audio in edio.
+7 more with pictures and audio in the lessonMore words
- action item
- sum up
- raise a concern
- fall through
- reach a consensus
- run over
- trial run
Grammar: gerunds and infinitives in meetings
Meetings run on verbs that decide the form of the next verb: people suggest doing, agree to do and ask someone to do. Following one agenda item from the email to the decision, learners sort these verbs into four patterns, then meet four verbs whose meaning changes with the form.
Verb + -ing or to + verb?
After some verbs, the next verb takes -ing; after others, to + verb. Learn them in groups.
Four patterns after a verb
Some verbs take -ing (suggest, avoid, risk), others to + verb (agree, decide, afford), and some an object before to: Ryan will ask the roasters to sign up. After a preposition, the verb takes -ing: Instead of hiring a team, we'll pay overtime.
| Pattern | Verbs and phrases | Example |
|---|---|---|
| verb + -ing | suggest, recommend, avoid, consider, mind, finish, keep, delay, postpone, risk, involve, deny, can't help | Ryan suggested starting with Saturdays. |
| verb + to + verb | agree, decide, plan, promise, refuse, offer, expect, hope, manage, fail, need, want, aim, arrange, afford, tend | We agreed to test weekend shifts. |
| verb + someone + to + verb | ask, tell, remind, advise, allow, expect, want, encourage | Ryan will ask the roasters to sign up. |
| preposition + -ing | look forward to, object to, interested in, instead of, in favor of, against, before, after | Instead of hiring a team, we'll pay overtime. |
When to is a preposition
In look forward to and object to, to is a preposition, not part of an infinitive, so the -ing form follows it: I look forward to hearing from you, never to hear. The same goes for in favor of adding and against hiring.
Look forward to and object to
Here to is a preposition, not part of the infinitive, so the -ing form follows: I look forward to hearing from you. Ryan objected to hiring a team.
Remember, forget, stop and try
These verbs take both forms, with different meanings. I remember meeting Lukas is a memory; Remember to send the minutes is a task. We've stopped using plastic tape ends a habit, while Ryan stopped to answer a call pauses one thing to do another.
| Verb | + -ing | + to + verb |
|---|---|---|
| remember | a memory of the past: I remember meeting Lukas in Amsterdam. | a task you don't forget: Remember to send the minutes. |
| forget | a past moment, usually with never: I'll never forget opening our first café. | a task you didn't do: Sorry, I forgot to book the room. |
| stop | end an activity: We've stopped using plastic tape. | pause in order to do something: Ryan stopped to answer a call. |
| try | do it as an experiment: Ana tried roasting the Kenyan coffee a little longer. | make an effort that is hard or fails: He tried to open the door, but it was stuck. |
Negatives and Would you mind…?
Not goes right before the -ing form or to: We decided not to hire anyone yet. Thanks for not interrupting. In a meeting, Would you mind + -ing is a polite request: Would you mind taking the minutes today?
Negatives and polite requests
Put not before the -ing form or before to: We decided not to hire anyone yet. Thanks for not interrupting. In meetings, Would you mind + -ing is a polite request: Would you mind taking the minutes today?
Typical mistakes at work
Ryan suggested to start with Saturdays.
Ryan suggested starting with Saturdays.
suggest + -ing: never suggest to do or suggest someone to do
I look forward to meet you.
I look forward to meeting you.
to is a preposition here
Please avoid to make last-minute changes.
Please avoid making last-minute changes.
avoid + -ing
We agreed testing weekend shifts.
We agreed to test weekend shifts.
agree + to + verb
More lessons on this grammar: Gerunds and infinitives lessons and exercises
Try the gerunds and infinitives exercises
Try them yourself: these are the same exercises your students do in edio.
What's in the lesson
- 11 auto-checked exercises
- 3 games
- 2 teacher-checked tasks
- 1 real-life document
- 1 grammar scheme
- 1 set of word cards
- 1 audio clip
- 1 picture
- 1 transcript
The main objectives of this lesson are to:
- choose the -ing form or to after a verb: Ryan suggested starting with Saturdays. We agreed to test weekend shifts.
- use the -ing form after prepositions, including the to of look forward to: Instead of hiring a team, we'll pay overtime. I look forward to hearing from you.
- tell remember doing from remember to do, and stop, forget and try the same way: Remember to send the minutes.
- chair an agenda item: open it, keep it on time, sum up and hand out action items: So, to sum up… Who's going to talk to the roasters?
Lesson 7 of Business English B2 · A Year at Wrenfield is the third in the unit Meetings and figures, which covers scheduling, figures, meetings and negotiating. It extends lesson 4's Would you mind + -ing and the verbs + to of English A2.1 lesson 29 (want to, decide to); lesson 8 then takes the deal under discussion to the negotiating table. A disagreement over a second shift gives learners real reasons to suggest, object to and agree to.
Students open boxes of questions about the meetings in their own working week, learn ten phrases with pictures and audio, from chair a meeting to trial run, and match them to situations. Claire's email sets the agenda. At the meeting, an AI-voiced dialogue, Ryan argues against hiring before anything is signed and proposes Saturday shifts instead; students then sort meeting phrases into chairing, agreeing and disagreeing.
After the scheme come four checked exercises, including a table that turns what people said into the minutes. In the chat, students tell a colleague who missed the meeting what was decided; the wheel has them open a meeting, raise a concern or sum up. Homework mixes a drill on remember and stop with a memory game, then a meeting summary email and a recorded opinion on three proposals, which go to the teacher.
- Grammar:
- gerunds and infinitives · verb + -ing · verb + to-infinitive · verb + object + to-infinitive
- Topic:
- meetings · chairing a meeting · agreeing and disagreeing
Teaching tips
- Run the first agenda item for real: one student chairs, another argues the case against hiring, and the chair must close with So, to sum up… and an action item with a name and a day.
- Dictate the quotes from the minutes table: students write each line as the minutes would put it (Ryan suggested starting…, Ryan objected to hiring…), then check their versions in the exercise.
- With one-to-one professionals, use a real meeting from their week: they draft three action items with ask someone to, remind someone to and agree to, then read them out as the chair.
- Keep an -ing column and a to column on the board, and add every verb from the reading and the listening: avoid booking, promised to finish, risk paying, afford to lose.
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The whole course: Business English B2 · A Year at Wrenfield
20 lessons at B2 in American English that follow a year at Wrenfield Coffee Roasters in Portland, Oregon, as founder Claire Morgan and her team win a Dutch hotel contract. Learners network, write emails, run meetings, negotiate, handle complaints and present figures, with one grammar point per lesson.See the course
Unit 1 First contacts
networking, a company story, a business lunch and emails: present tenses, the present perfect, question tags, indirect questions
Unit 2 Meetings and figures
scheduling, sales figures, running a meeting and negotiating: future forms, trends, gerunds and infinitives, conditionals
Lesson 5Setting Up MeetingsFuture forms for meetings and schedules
Lesson 6The Monthly FiguresDescribing trends
Lesson 7 · you're hereRunning a MeetingGerunds and infinitives in meetings
Lesson 8Negotiating a DealFirst and second conditionals in a negotiation
Unit 3 Problems and growth
a complaint, a late shipment, a launch and hiring: the present perfect continuous, the passive, comparatives, relative clauses
Unit 4 Reports, prices and feedback
reporting back, explaining prices, expenses and feedback: reported speech, linking words, modals of obligation, past modals
Unit 5 Looking back and ahead
what went wrong, other cultures, an agency and next year: the third and mixed conditionals, past deduction, the causative, the future perfect
