prefer going to and prefer to go to

[Anne59]

How on earth can I correclty answer the following questions?

What's the difference between prefer going to and prefer to go to?

When should I use each of them?

Also

Is there a simple answer to the following question?

What parts of grammar can follow after:-

I would like to ...

So far I have thought of the verb infinitive, some conjunctions, adverbs but are there a lot more or is the question too vague?

[tedtmc]

prefer going to... noun
prefer to go to... verb

I am not able to answer your 2nd question.

not a teacher

[IvanV]

prefer to go to... verb

Why so?

[Jaskin]

Hello,

That website was realy helpful when I was looking for explanation.

gerund or infinite

Cheers.

[Philly]

How on earth can I correclty answer the following questions?

What's the difference between prefer going to and prefer to go to?

When should I use each of them?

Hi Anne

I'd say the gerund is typically used to refer to an activity in general, and the infinitive typically refers to a more specific instance of the activity:

Gerund:
Q: Which of these do you usually prefer: going to the movies or watching TV
A: Most of the time I prefer watching TV. Going to the movies is too expensive to do every day.

Infinitive:
Q: Let's go out tonight. How about a movie?
A: I (would) prefer to stay in tonight. Why don't we just rent a video?

[David L.]

Jaskin:

Excellent site - best explanation I've seen of this!