What are some difficult subject-verb agreement errors?
This is the fourth and final chapter about Subject-Verb Agreement. To complete this reader, read each chapter carefully and then unlock and complete our materials to check your understanding.
– Discuss how subject-verb agreement errors can be avoided
– Introduce seven difficult subject-verb agreement errors
– Provide examples of each error type to guide the learner
Chapter 4
The final chapter for this topic should help you to recognise the remaining subject-verb agreement errors that may be limiting your fluency in English. The following seven error types might be more difficult to spot than those in the previous chapter, but they’re still easy enough to fix once you know how.
1. Collective Nouns
There is a certain type of noun such as ‘staff’ or ‘family’ which represents a group or collective, and these nouns can cause problems for learners of English when attempting agree subjects with verbs. Ultimately, these collective nouns may be either singular or plural depending on what they’re referring to (as well as the writer or speaker’s intention). This is shown in the following examples:
In these examples, we can see that the first sentence uses the collective noun plurally to indicate the members within the group, whereas in the second example that noun is singular to indicate the same group but as a collective.
2. Expletive Constructions
The following two examples are expletive constructions, which are structures that begin with words such as ‘there’ or ‘here’. Although ‘there’ and ‘here’ might look like the subjects of the clause because of their fronted position, they are in fact not:
As can be seen in these examples, the subject of the clause follows the verb in these constructions. To determine agreement you must therefore first determine the correct subject before forming the agreement for person or number.
3. Intervening Words
Certain phrases such as ‘together with’, ‘along with’ and ‘as well as’ may be used to join two noun phrases together in what appears to be one subject:
However, as is noticeable in these examples, unlike when using ‘and’ to join two such noun phrases, when we use intervening words such as ‘as well as’ the verb only agrees with the true subject– which is the first noun phrase, ‘the cat’. If, for example, we used the plural ‘cats’, the verb would be required to agree plurally:
However, as is noticeable in these examples, unlike when using ‘and’ to join two such noun phrases, when we use intervening words such as ‘as well as’ the verb only agrees with the true subject – which is the first noun phrase, ‘the cat’. If, for example, we used the plural ‘cats’, the verb would be required to agree plurally:
5. Numbers and Units
When writing or speaking about amounts of money, lengths of time, or distances as units, and when the main noun is preceded by a number, you should always use a singular form of the verb if you wish to maintain correct agreement. This is true even though the subject may appear to be plural:
5. Numbers and Units
When writing or speaking about amounts of money, lengths of time, or distances as units, and when the main noun is preceded by a number, you should always use a singular form of the verb if you wish to maintain correct agreement. This is true even though the subject may appear to be plural:
6. Fractions and Portions
When using words that indicate fractions or portions such as ‘some’, ‘all’ or ‘a lot’, the subject will often appear to be embedded in a prepositional phrase using ‘of’. Unlike as was explained in Chapter 3.6, here we do need to pay attention to the noun phrase that follows ‘of’ as this is our subject:
7. The Subjunctive Mood
Finally, although rarely found in English these days, the subjunctive mood, which is generally used to express wishes or situations which aren’t true, can cause some difficulty as it does not follow the normal rules of subject-verb agreement. In this mood, singular subjects are paired with plural verbs such as in the following examples. Such mood is particularly common with the ‘be’ verb:
However, many speakers of English these days do not follow this rule themselves. Nevertheless, if you wish to be prescriptively perfect or score extra points with your teacher when forming subject-verb agreement, then you should practise and follow all the guidance we’ve provided in Chapters 1-4.
Downloadables
Once you’ve completed all four chapters about subject-verb agreement, you might also wish to download our beginner, intermediate and advanced worksheets to test your progress or print for your students. These professional PDF worksheets can be easily accessed for only a few Academic Marks.
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