In English, you can use either the infinitive (to speak) or the present participle (speaking) as noun versions of a verb: ‘to speak well is a gift’, ‘speaking loud is hard for me’. In this sense, Spanish is simpler because it only has one form for all these cases, the infinitive, which ends in -ar, -er or -ir: ‘hablar bien es un don’, ‘hablar duro es difícil para mí’. The equivalent of the present participle, which ends in -ndo, is NEVER used as a noun in Spanish.