Of all the grammatical structures we studied in class, the one I wished I had studied harder is nominalization: turning a verb or adjective into a noun so that it can be used as the subject or the object of a sentence. Although only four pages are devoted to nominalization, my advice to you, dear reader, is spend a lot of time practicing nominalized forms.

Nominalizing Verbs

Seeing is believing. In this example, the 〜ing form makes nouns (gerunds) out of the verbs to see and to believe.

Any plain form of a verb can be nominalized: positive, negative, present, past, continuous. So my real complaint is that I did not spend enough time in class studying plain forms. My weakness is remembering the negative past. I think too much of the beginning student's time is spent focused on learning 〜ます forms. Plain forms are used in so many ways--not just in informal speech.

In "Using Japanese" (Would that be 「日本語を使うこと」? or is he using 〜ing to make the continuous? In English, it's hard to differentiate.), William McClure says that the main difficulty for the student is learning when to use こと and when to use の. "Yookoso!" explains that こと is used for generalizations and の is used when talking about subjective or personal experience.

Maybe my real problem is that I'm getting this mixed up with the のだ｜のです、んだ｜んです. (Yookoso! Book 1. Grammar Point 20.) But I don't think so. I think the real problem is that Yookoso! introduces them as two separate grammar points. I think that GP20 is just one situation in which you use nominalized verbs. So Yookoso! confuses the issue by teaching usage before grammar and then treating them as two different things.