CPE sentence transformation

Hi,

1. To unleash the power of verb chose infinitive over gerund and noun phrases.
2. Soften the verb by using gerund to stretch longing emotion.

Are those two rules valid?

For the first rule:
a. Its instruments are used for routing, testing, and evaluating the audio lines.
b. Its instruments are used to route, test, and evaluate the audio lines.Yes, this is more direct, more dynamic.

For the second rule:
a. She has spent hours to wait for her husband to come home.  In this example, 'to wait' is so unidiomatic that I'd say it is wrong. Perhaps you can find a better example. However, it seems a bit odd to me to make a general rule about a very specific type of context, ie one that expresses 'longing emotion'. How often do we need or want to do that? I wonder if you fully realize how the term 'longing emotion' sounds in English. It sounds like something one feels very rarely.

b. She has spent hours waiting for her husband to come home. This sounds fine.

In both cases, b is the better choice.

The second rule seems to violate the first rule. I don't see why. The rules say that the infinitive gives power, and the gerund softens, With emotion, do we not want to soften, to reduce the sense of action?

However, we don't want the act of waiting to overpower the act of spending hours waiting. The longing emotion is in spending time waiting, not in waiting by itself. Therefore, we demote to wait to waiting. You're certainly trying to deal with subtleties here. As I said above, it might be better if you could find a more suitable example to discuss. 

Best wishes, Clive

Hi,

2. Soften the verb by using gerund to stretch longing emotion.
I learned the second rule a long time ago. Now, I cannot find a note of the example. However, I remember the instruction telling us that when we use search for / wait for /  look for / etc... in a dependent clause,  we should demote the verb from infinitive to gerund to allow the verb in the main clause to grab readers' attention, especially when the main clause expresses a longing emotion / an intensive effort. So here are two sentences, and again, to follow the second rule, I must choose the second one.

Attentively, he looks at each picture in the huge photo album to search for a familiar face that he can vaguely remember.
Attentively, he looks at each picture in the huge photo album searching for a familiar face that he can vaguely remember.

I must have paid no attention to my teacher's instruction if you say the example still does not make sense. I wouldn't disgaree with your suggestion that the second example here is better than the first. To me, 'searching' suggests a single activity that continues while perhaps hundreds of photos are looked at. On the other hand, 'to search' suggests a series of discrete activities that start/stop as each photo is looked at. The 'searching' activity with a long and single duration is obviously more intense.

Yet here, would you suggest that 'trying' is better? Maybe. I'm not so sure.

He ran as fast as he could, to try to win a gold medal.

He ran as fast as he could, trying to win a gold medal.

I'm inclined to feel that you have to assess each individual sentence and context on its own merits. Unfortunately, of course, that's hard for a learner of English to do. So, yes., I think your suggested rule has some value, but I would view it more as a 'guideline' to be considerd than as a firm 'rule' to be obeyed.

Best wishes, Clive

Hi,

With his loving father’s image in his heart, John relentlessly pushes his body to the limit trying to win a gold medal.

What do you think? To me, the second sentence is better . . . Yes, it is.

I have to go out now. It's Saturday night, and time to dance the Tango.

Best wishes again, Clive