Subject-Verb Agreement

“Many African-Americans believe the apparent success of immigrants is coming at their expense.”

“……the expectations are that the spread between the two hasn’t worsened…..”

Subject-Verb Agreement : verb is agreeing the number of the subject.

Difficulties identifying the agreement : 

* Subjects with long modifying phrases following the head noun

“The reason why you take this course is to develop awareness on English Grammar.”

* Nouns and pronouns, phrases number may be confusing

“The pair of scissors you threw at me was a bit of a head ache.”

* The “-s” ending for present tense and plural

“Mathematics plays/play an important role in our daily life.”

Head Noun

How to identify it :

 * if sentence has a prepositional phrase HN is on the left of the first prep.

“But in many states, the task of regulating the internet laws has become an enormous burden.”

* if there’s a ”not” : on the left/before not

“The students in room 4/6 can not stand up and dance.”

* if sentence includes relative clause : on the left

“The remote action which we talked about a while ago was dancing.”

* correlative conjunctions : it’s after “or”/”nor” Both…..and/ either….or/ neither….nor

“Either he or I …… going to the newsagent this morning.”

* Mass Nouns (furniture,damage, luggage ) ; Abstract Nouns (advice, joy, courage) ; Collective Nouns (audience, crowd, team, group, family) : singular / the young /the youngs

“…………..  is mine.”

* some subjects require singular verbs (mathmatics, physics) courses, deseases, place names, news, book and movie titles, distance,time,money,arithmetic oparetion (equals)

* clause subjects, gerunds and infinitives

“ what I want is you.” / “Having you is all I want.” / “To have you is my everlasting dream.”

* fractions, percentages, quantifiers are

Singular if : singular noun (book), noun clause (what he says is…), non-count clause (information), each, every, everyone, A number of students… None of……

Plural if : collective nouns (team, young) according to your intention and meaning

Exceptions : either/neither of the + noun phrase/ None of the + Noun Phrase

“Either of the students in the classroom is perfect.”