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Subject Verb Agreement

How to construct sentences with correct subject and verb agreement.

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Every Sentence has a Subject

  • The subject can be either singular or plural

Examples of a subject that is a singular noun: I, you, he, she, it, the girl, the boy, the cat, the dog etc.

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Plural nouns:

The girls, the boys, the cats, the dogs, they.

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Verb Endings

Singular

Plural

I jump

We jump

You jump

You jump

He/She/It jumps

They jump

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Singular Subject (3rd person) means -s ending verb

  • Typically, if the subject is third person singular then the verb has an -s added to the end.

Examples:

No -s attached to subject -s attached to the verb

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1. The boy swims every day

2. The girl runs on Mondays.

3. She likes to read.

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If the Subject is Plural...

  • Then the verb generally does not have an -s at the end of the sentence.

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  • For example:
  • The students read fiction novels over the summer.

The boys play instruments.

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Plural subject verb without -s ending

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Some verbs are Irregular and do not fit this rule

DO

Singular: He does

Plural: They do

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HAVE

Singular: She has

Plural: They have

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BE

Singular: He is/ She was

Plural:They are/ They were

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The subject may not always be the first word in the sentence.

  • You may have noticed that in most of these examples the subject is the first word of the sentence. However, this is not always the case.
  • Sometimes the subject will come after the verb. This can happen if the sentence is a question or if the sentence starts with the word there.

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  • Some examples:

1. Why is the test taking the students so long?

2. Why are you late?

3. There is no excuse for not doing your homework.

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Two or more Subjects joined with “or”

  • If two or more subjects are joined with the word or, the verb agrees with the subject closest to it.

Examples:

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1. Either Jenny or the twins will eat carrots.

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2. My sisters or brother reads to me every night.

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Correct the errors

Directions: Copy down the following sentences. Next, identify the subject and verb of each sentence. If the sentence has no errors, leave it the way it is. If you notice an error in the sentence, edit it.

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1. The classes I usually don’t like is social studies.

2. The forks and the knives goes in the top drawer.

3. Tom and Matt have English papers due today.

4. The students eats lunch at 12:45pm.

5. Everybody understands grammar.