Academic writing

• Person


  • Singular
  • Plural
• 1


  • I dance
  • We dance
• 2


  • You dance
  • We dance
• 3


  • He/she/it dances
  • They dance
• Therefore, when a subject agrees in number with a verb, the sentence is said to have subject verb agreement. Hence concord in grammar refers to the agreement relations existing between two grammatical units. Now let us take a look at the rules governing subject verb agreement in order to avoid basic errors in speech and in writing.
• The rules of enncord
• Rule 1: A singular subject must agree with a singular verb
• In English, the plural marker (s) is added to a singular noun to make it plural
• But we do away with the plural marker (s) from the verbs to make them plural and for a verb to be singuler in English, the (1) or (es) marker must be added to the verb.
• The girl walks to school daily.
• Kwame enjoys hard work
• The student dances Axonte at the club.
• Le plays football.
• Mabel is a student
• Looking at the examples above, all the underlined subjects are singular in natum, The girl, Kwame, She, The student, He and Mabel hence, the verb in the senten must agree with. The subjects above are singular in nature; the boy, are singula Hence the verbs in the sentences -walks, enjoys, plays, dances must each ag with the subject.
• Rule 2: A plural subject must agree with a plural verb
• The girls walk to school daily.
• They enjoy hard work.
• The students dance Azonto at the club.
• They play football.
• They are students.
• Note that where the verb contains an auxiliary verb, the subject agrees with only the auxiliary verb and not the main verb; example:
• The girl has broken the world record.
• The girls have broken the world record.
• Note that the verb agreement applies only to the third person subjects there is no distinction however, between the 1 person singular subject and the 1" person plural subject. For example
• I eat.
• We eat
• Also, there is agreement when the verb is in the present tense. If the verb is in its part form, there isn't a noticeable agreement between the subject and the verb.
• The baby cried herself to sleep
• The babies cried themselves to sleep.
• Rule 3: All titles are considered singular therefore choose a singular verb
• Titles of books, plays, movies, novels, television programmes. Magazines, stories, newspapers etc. are considered singular, so they must take a singular verb. Below are some examples
• Ananse in the land of idiots is a story that interests me.
• Maria Cruz enjoys a lot of viewership on UTV.
• The daily Graphic has won a lot of awards in recent times
• Agoo Magazine is produced in Ghana.
• Activity 1.1
• Underline the correct form of the verb that agrees with the subject in each of the sentences
• Playing football (bring, brings) me great pleasure.
• Our participation in sports and games (improve, improves) our health.