Subject Verb Agreement Part 1

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Subject Verb Agreement

Subject-verb agreement plays a pivotal role in crafting well-structured and grammatically accurate English, serving as the cornerstone of effective communication. It is actually the foundation stone on which accurate English is constructed. If you are unaware of this basic grammatic principle, you are liable to commit unpardonable grammatical mistakes leading to a very poor English in writing and speaking. A student must be made aware of this principle from the primary level of learning English.

This principle is also known as the Rule of Concord. According to this rule a singular subject takes a singular verb and a plural subject takes a plural verb. You can understand this principle from the example given below:-
Read the following sentence carefully:-
He is writing an essay. ( In this sentence, you can see that 'He' is singular and 'He' takes a singular verb that is 'is' but suppose your teacher asks you to replace 'He' with 'They'. Now the resulting sentence will be as follows:-
They are writing an essay. ( You can see in this sentence That 'They' is plural so it takes a plural verb that is 'are'.
We can make a list of all singular subjects and all plural verbs. The list is as follows:-

As you can see, in the first row we have all the singular subjects and all the singular verbs. Similarly, in the second row we have all the plural subjects and all the plural verbs. However, the Rule of Concord is not without exceptions. Subjects 'I' and 'You' prove to be exception to this rule. 'You' is exception in the sense that whether 'You' is singular or plural, it always takes a plural verb. 'I' is also an exception because it takes mostly plural verbs but it takes 'was' which is singular and 'am' as special helping verb created for 'I' only. Thus, we need to make some changes in the above list and resulting list will be as follows:-


This list will help you in deciding correct verb for your subject. Just decide your subject and then locate your subject in the above list and then you can see all helping verbs opposite it. 
You can click the link below and see YouTube videos of mine. You can see them for all the details. 






Recommended book for practice
For better understanding of grammar, students can refer to Wren & Martin – High School English Grammar. It is widely used for practice and strengthening basic concepts. 

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