All of your examples are gerunds if we stick to modern terminology. Forget about the terminology verbal noun . It's total garbage! It has many different definitions, depending on the author and when the grammar book was written.

Mister Micawber wrote: You must be a young man, Aperisic-- you have a penchant for overreaction. Ha, ha, a good joke. No, I was anyhow very temporary here - I have extremely busy weeks and probably months ahead. So it was around time to leave

People have found this text useful so I am repeating it here in this entirety with error fixed (there are several posts combined in it) B efore I give you more detailed explanation I have to tell you that in dictionaries you can frequently find

Before I give you more detailed explanation I have to tell you that in dictionaries you can frequently find the type of the word: countable, uncountable, mass, abstract… However what is more important is to understand that the context is equally

The use of the zero article in English depends on the kind of noun this article refers to. Within your second sentence: "I like the teachers of my school", the noun "teacher" is a countable concrete noun and thus requires the definite article.

Hello Mr P Thank you for the kind reply and I am sorry for bothering you with this problem. I myself thought a bit about it and looked for any hints to solve it in my grammar books, but the efforts ended rather in vain. Although even CGEL didn't