Subject - Verb Agreement

 Have you ever felt unsure about a sentence you just thought of? Or about a little compound of words that just left your mouth without thinking much about the fierce English grammatical standards?

Yeah, I can say that it happens all the time to me, but with practice and a good understanding of some grammar rules, I can assure you that you’ll build up stronger confidence to speak more fluently. Today, we will take a look at subject-verb agreement so we can better understand how to match the verbs with the subject.

Subject-verb agreement is about matching the verb with the subject of the clause. Let’s start our journey by correcting the sentence above. Why do you think that “The dogs is sitting” is an incorrect sentence? If you guessed that the verb “is” doesn’t match with “the dogs,” you are correct!

The first thing that you should look after when building sentences is: Who is the subject? And what is he/she/it doing?

In our case, the subject is “the dogs”, and they are doing something. With this, we discovered all the information we need to match the verb. The subject is plural (more than one dog), and the action is an auxiliary verb to be: “is/are.”

There are a lot of rules that can help you during the matching process and this video shared on our Discord server by @Ailean is a good start on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/live/gpPYs_iGn00?si=6pK0DbdYCCJOHmxe

Watch the video and explore the matter further by yourself. For today, let’s finish with some examples, and then you will correct some exercises down below in the comments or tag me on Discord if you want.

Examples:

Me and Natalie love to run every morning. -> I and Natalie = plural -> love, not loves

The rain is falling -> the rain = it -> is

These shoes fit perfectly. → shoes = they → fit, not fits

Now check these sentences and say whether they’re right or wrong. If they’re wrong, then correct them and write down your answer!

 

1. Spaghetti and meatballs are my favorite dish! ->
2. My legs hurts, I need to rest for a bit!
3. You should follow this path until the other path is in a bad state.
4. My phone and wallet were on the table.
5. The cake look delicious.

Written by Sergio