Subject Verb Agreement

[diprod]

This is a simple grammar rule and it's called the Subject Verb Agreement. When the noun is singular, the verb is plural and vice versa. Lots of non-native speakers always make a mistake when it comes to this.

[1inamillion]

  On 1/22/2014 at 4:42 PM, diprod said:

This is a simple grammar rule and it's called the Subject Verb Agreement. When the noun is singular, the verb is plural and vice versa. Lots of non-native speakers always make a mistake when it comes to this.

The subject and verb must agree in number: both must be singular, or both must be plural. In order to find out if your verb and subject agree, you need to able to identify the subject of your sentence. In present tense nouns and verbs form plural in opposite ways. Nouns add an s to its singular form; verbs remover the s from the singular form. The subject agreement rules apply to all personal pronouns except I and you., which, although singular, require plural forms of verbs.

[SarahRTW]

This is an important part of language that is easy to get mixed up, even for native speakers.  For some things identifying the subject is easy other times, not so much.  Best to examine af ew example to understand:

The girl runs home from school.

Subject:  The Girl

This is a simple subject, a girl.  Singular.

Therefore the verb is conjugated accordingly "runs" not "run

To write "The girl run home from school" would be an example of incorrect subject-agreement.

My hair is very long and thick

This is a trickier one

Subject: Hair. 

Just one strand? Obviously not.  Hair is a collective noun; it refers to all the hairs on your head.  Collective nouns are singular because its one noun to cover the collective group.

The teams decide to go get ice cream

Subject "The teams"

Team is also a collective noun, and refers to all the players, from the captain to the rookie.  In this case, there is more than one team...so the subject is plural.  The verb must then be conjugated as "decide" rather than "decides"

The two boys take the short-cut to the park

Subject: The two boys

This is a simple one again,  there are two boys.  This is not a collective, so the subject is plural. 

I hope this helps!